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Are Vertical Mice The Next Ergonomic Trend?
ThinSkin writes "Devoid of kookiness like many of its ergonomic counterparts, the VerticalMouse 2 is shaped like an ordinary mouse, only turned 90 degrees so that your arm is in a natural 'handshake position.' ExtremeTech's review of the VerticalMouse 2 suggests that its horsepower and familiar feel make it a worthy candidate to replace a horizontal mouse. Some of the drawbacks include its $75 price tag and difficulty to pick up in 3D gaming scenarios."
... yeeesss, this 'handshake position' seems very familiar somehow.
Seriously though, might I suggest inventing a self cleaning keyboard/mousepad.
Superb Hosting
If you compare the design of the VerticalMouse 2 with the Quill Mouse, you can see that they're virtually identical...with one important difference. The Quill Mouse is equipped with a shelf where the edge of your hand rests. The VerticalMouse 2 has no such shelf. Without a support for your hand, you'll have to support the weight of your hand by:
or,
Now add to all this the discomfort the large-handed will suffer as the edge of their hands develop friction burns against their desktops.
Any way you slice it, this product is a bad design and a non-starter. Save your money.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
A main driver for this is the desire to reduce the risk or pain associated with carpal tunnel syndrome and other RSI disorders ... The idea is to allow your arm to control the mouse in a more natural position, with the thumb up, in a hand-shaking position. Doctors who specialize in ergonomics consider this position preferable.
I have to ask, did anyone at ExtremeTech actually talk to a doctor who specializes in such things, or were these comments lifted from an Evoluent press release?
The reality of RSI is just so, so much more complex than these simple solutions would suggest.
Although how can you argue with a review like this:
Gained all the votes in terms of comfort and facility of use, of "look", colour and sympathy: the panel as a whole totally adhered to this new product.
Three Squirrels
Ages ago I had a Gyration GyroMouse which totally kicked butt. With a mouse free from having to make contact with a horizontal surface, plus the fact I clicked with my thumb, rather than stressing my index finger, I found it to be a natural and easy feel. The only caveat was as the mouse remained in my palm the piezo-gyros would warm up a bit and the mouse would drift a little, but recalibration wasn't hard to do. $75 isn't an issue when you're talking about getting a superior mouse.
Poo. I've got some real ideas on how a mouse really should work, which could allow hands to remain on the keyboard, but after seeing an idea of mine ripped right off of /. and for sale on ThinkGeek, you
can guess why I won't post any of these ideas.
and it makes toast, too!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Basically, no they're not. No more than we are ever going to drive our cars using joysticks or keyboards. People like what they're used to. This is a gimmick. Move along, nothing to see here.
Tomorrow, I may eat another house plant
Trackballs are the way to go. I don't know why we ever chose a mouse over a trackball. They are much easier, as you don't have to move your hand/arm all over the place. Only your fingers and thumb move. Since switching to a trackball, I have much less problems with wrist pain. Also, I find that trackballs are more accurate, and work greate for PC gaming, because you don't have to lift and reposition it every few seconds.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Get perpendiculahar...
$75 for the righty version. It is $105 for the lefty version. No wonder lefties are continually forced to conform to a right handed world. It was bad enough going to Catholic school, but I thought that the lefty-discrimination was over once I broke out...
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different.
One of the major reasons that the standard mouse caught on is that a 2-year old child can understand the concept of reaching out and grabbing something. The traditional mouse layout mimics this behavior. This 90-degree rotated mouse is counter-intuitive to reaching out and grabbing...
Long story short, you might like using this mouse but don't count on it ever replacing the current "horizontal" mouse for standard users.
So, if these take off, will we be top-clicking and bottom-clicking? Or maybe we'll renamed it index-clicking, middle-clicking and ring-clicking? Or maybe we'll just still call it left and right vestigially, sort of like the way we still click on 3.5 inch floppy icons to save files to other media...
*boggle*
vk.
I've owned a few vertical mice like this, formerly known as "Dr. Mouse", now it's the "3M Renaissance" Mouse. I've had no complaints. Zero. They're fantastic. I'm using one right now. I got my friends hooked on them too.
This signature is being generated randomly.
I have RSI problems in my hands and forearms and elbows. Not carpal tunnel syndrome- various inflammations that never seem to completely heal. Doctors have been little use, medical science doesn't seem to have caught up with RSI.
Anyway I tried a vertical mouse (from evoluent) for several months. Eventually I started to find it uncomfortable and switched back to a normal mouse. I never found it to make much of a difference one way or another.
I also use a Kinesis Essential keyboard, which I've also not found to make a big difference one way or another.
I could see a tilted mouse working but full on vertical is a non-starter I think. My guess would be that vertial is to steep for the vast majority of people. Shaking hands is something that one does breifly and therefore I am willing to move my body into a less than optimal position. I don't find shaking hands particularly comfortable therefore I don't think I would find shakign hands all day with a mouse comfortable. Anyway, the big problem I see is that the mouse will tend to move away as you click. This makes sense as it has nothing to push against. A hand rest would solve that at teh expense of making the device clunky.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Console gaming is largely 3D gaming as well. So if PC 3D gaming is going out, then so is console gaming and frankly I don't see either of those happening.
And as far as the upgrade thing is concerned, you buy a new console every few years, why not some new hardware every few years? You don't have to have the latest and greatest always you know. Just IMO though.
More than a hundred years ago telegraphers discovered that a key that moved side to side instead of up and down and that allowed the hand to be vertical instead of horizontal greatly reduced the incidence of the dreaded "glass arm". There have been and still are lots of keys produced that take advantage of this. For one of the prime examples, see the productes still offered by Vibroplex.
73
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Ok, on the graphic example of the "twisted" arm, the hand holding the regular mouse, is twised WAY to far.
(Link to graphic in the article here.)
Also, it seems to me, holding the mouse in a 90 degree angle, like their many examples show, would stress my THUMB more than holding a regular mouse would stress my "twisted" arm..
Try it yourself. Hold your arm like in their example, pretend like your holding the 90 degree mouse. Now move your wrist 90 degrees, as if you were going to hold a mouse. I'm not sure about everybody else, but my wrist mostly moved, NOT my arm.
Nice try though.
-Mikey
My girlfriend uses the VerticalMouse 2 (photo) and it's come to be known in our circle of friends as "Homer Simpson's Shoe", mainly because of me constantly reminding her that it looked a bit like Homer Simpson's shoe. With some purple parts.
In any case, after using it for a few months, the pains she had been experiencing in her arm from using a regular mouse are gone.
I used to sell these; maybe not this model, but this design has been around for at least five years. Good in theory - it eliminates the unnatural twisting of the hand - but in practice there's hardly a market for it.
The companies that sell these (I know, I used to work for one) aren't actually aiming for the disabled-by-RSI market - in practice, there's very few people who actually HAVE disabling computer related RSI, and those that do usually just cut down on the intensity of their computer use - who they're aiming for is big businesses (call centres and the like) who they try and scare with the 'Unless you buy ten thousand of these, your employees will get RSI and SUE YOU!!!' line. Nobody much buys it, except maybe in the USA.
Of course, the bottom line is, does it actually work? When selling this kind of thing I tried using this and a variety of other 'ergonomic' mice intensively, and most of them gave me more pain than a 'normal' mouse did - mainly because my use of a normal mouse adapts easily depending on what position it is in relative to me, whereas these vertical mice have to be used sitting straight at the desk with your hand and arm in the 'proper' position. Anything else - especially using it standing up - is extremely difficult and contorts your hand unnaturally.
I hate to piss all over somebody's design, but I've seen so many different 'ergonomic' mice come and go. None of them has caught on - the only one that has got close is Microsoft's curvy mouse, and that's just because MS had enough investment power behind them to put one in the box of every new computer. Interestingly, I haven't seen one of them for a while, all the same.
I recently tried over $500 in pointing devices to help with carpal tunnel from playing internet poker and I'm settled on the evoluent mouse. Here are some criticisms of other alternatives:
3M Mouse: Has no scroll wheel. That makes this mouse completely useless to me.
Quill Mouse: The "shelf" is made of hard plastic. I much prefer using huge soft mousepads and resting my hands on those.
Trackball: Fine for normal use, impossible to play 10 tables of poker with.
Air/Gyration mice: Fun for a few minutes, but tiresome longer than that.
If you thought it was easy enough to move that mouse just a notch, before putting that dot, connecting that poly, etc .... with a normal mouse, your problems will multiply with that.
:) and when not - I use a trackball ...
I am not a CAD worker nor a GFX designer, but mice annoy the hell out of me enough. I personally have a trackball, one that is an old Logi design, and that pointer has a approx 35 degree button surface, so the idea is not entirely new.
I actually beleive, that an angle smaller than 90 is more appropriate and a more natural rest.
But hey, what does that matter? I type all day on the console
summary: I think it is a really retarded design
For most people, the keyboard is still a significant UI and key-tomouse transitions won't be facilitated by having to go through a flat (keyboard) to vertical (mouse) sequence.
Perhaps a more natural thing would be to to use your feet under the desk or something like that.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Like the parent poster suggested, this mouse comes with a thumb scrollwheel and an additional rocking thumbswitch. My hand is tilted at approximately 20 degrees. Not vertical, but not horizontal, either. It's very comfortable to use.
It took me about two weeks to get used to it. In other words, it took about two weeks for my hand to "unlearn" its unnatural grip on a regular mouse and to instead stretch out on the PerfitMouse.
Does the mouse look sexy on my desk? No. Is it wireless? No. Is it comfortable and pain-free to use? YES!
Took a week or two to get used to it. The trickiest thing is that when you click, you are exerting force horizontally, not vertically like a normal mouse. With a normal mouse, the table resists the force. But with the vertical mouse, you have to train yourself to counter this force with your thumb. I don't even think about it now.
The software is also somewhat crunky and I suspect it was causing BSODs, but it works reasonably well with the standard Microsoft mouse stuff.
I'm glad I got it and I like using it. I was getting strain from most mice save the cheapo low profile Compaq one I had laying around. Mice are so thick these days, forcing you to arch your hands.
But it has not had anywhere near the impact on life that I got by switching to the Kinesis keyboard.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?