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Independent Benchmarking System for Mice
Heartless Gamer writes "Why benchmark a mouse? From ESReality; "In this environment where performance is king, it's ludicrous to think that mouse performance has never been measured for reviewing the products. Imagine reviewing the latest graphics card in the same way. Without benchmarks, reviewers would have to resort to loading up their favourite game and commenting on how their frag count improved. You would have no way to compare NVIDIA and ATI cards apart from the quality of the packaging. Without benchmarking, graphics card reviews would be almost entirely useless. So why do we put up with mouse reviews that are just as useless?""
Um, because the most important aspects of a mouse (how it fits your hand, and how it feels) are unquantifiable? I don't care about dpi or whatever, I want to be able to use it all day without getting RSI.
Mouse 1: Only runs into walls 30% of the time; thinks poop are like legos; enjoys the "Macarena"
Mouse 2: Like expensive cheeses; chases own tail; finds Conan O'Brian Funny
Mouse 3: Got out of the maze; presumed missing; my tuna salad sandwich is missing
Results: Use rats next time? Republicans?
Good point.
-EL
I'd say chewing is completely independent of leaving doots and drippings when it comes to marking up my benches.
As a longtime computer user and builder, I'm shocked - shocked, I say! - that we've never seen a really good benchmarking test for power buttons. I demand a definitive report and comparison on factors like clickiness, springiness, and LED brightness.
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All the salient points answered in the first reply. Lively discussion will NOT ensue.
For sufficiently small values of ludicrous, of course.
Linkman: Perhaps we need to know more of these mice men before we can really judge them. Perhaps not. Anyway, our thirty minutes are up.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
We all know these are the mice for those who want workmen's comp benefits due to RSI issues
From TFA: ESReports is an International site, so all Non-English posts will be deleted.
What the hell? Outside of this country EVERYONE speaks English?
Unfortunately, I picked up my mouse from the NIHM research facility. It has been horrible. I wake up in the middle of the night and the little bugger is correcting my code, playing with my pda, tweaking my project plans, embezzling from my work. Keeps shopping on line for peanut butter and sunflower seeds.
Now, if you excuse me. It is my time for exercise on the treadmill according to my pda.
In God we trust, all others require data.
I wonder what kind of score the very first mouse would get: http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/Archive/patent /Mouse.html
This is my signature. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Having read the article and looked at all the pretty graphs, I cannot help but wonder why the laser mice get such terrible results for "malfunction speed" compared to the non-laser mice. It would be interesting to dissect the mice and compare the physical size of the sensors, the diopters of the lenses, etc.
Could higher DPI mice (such as the laser mice) be merely lower DPI mice incorporating a different lens? (The lower DPI modes of configurable mice are almost certainly just a downsampling of the high-DPI sensor data.)
Personally, I see no reason coherent light would be any better than incoherent light when it comes to a small illuminator and camera, which is all an optical mouse really is (plus buttons and software). Resolutions on the order of less than 3000 dots per inch are orders of magnitude larger than physical limits due to wavelengths of light and what-have-you. Without the quality of the light being a factor, all that remains are the optics and sensors.
Oh great, now slashdot is posting stories of mice and men?
Have you read my journal today?
Is it useable by a left-handed?
"Having decided to benchmarking mice, there was several ways of going about it."
..what?
:x
I wholeheartedly agree!
While I'm not left-handed, I swap between right and left hands at work, to help prevent/minimize RSI effects. I go into computer stores, and see all these funky right-handed mice, and sigh.
I love my Razer, at home.
At work, I'm very happy with this (wired) Logitech mouse.
My gaming mouse of choice has become the Intellimouse Optical .
But I've noticed something strange with Microsoft Mice, they use a specialized driver (19 megs no less) and develop huge stuttering issues when you don't use the driver.
There's also a problem involving the driver locking up occasionally.
Well I use the laser mouse 5000 and the only thing I've noticed without the drivers is loss of some functionality. BTW there don't really appear to be a significent difference between optical vs laser, however both can be gotten for the same price. Now all I need is the functionality of the newfangled keyboards with the feel of my old IBM "M" keyboard.
There is something called ISO 9241-9 - Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals - Part 9: Requirements for non-keyboard input devices. It covers mouse performance, and a metric called throughput (TP). Its validity is a matter of considerable debate. You can read the following technical report from IBM Research for much more information. There is also a recent article in the Journal of Human-Computer Studies 61:6, 2004 by the same author on the same topic.
22 pages to talk about mice? No thanks.
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
Forgive me if I seem a bit obtuse. Why would I want to mark my benches with mice?
The furniture has already been marked, by the landlady's Siamese.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Microsoft® Wireless Laser Mouse 5000, Metallic Black It has a mail-in rebate that knocks $5 off the price. I had the optical version , but I like the laser mouse button placement better.
@ 2000 DPI, if it is accurately measuring up to 1M/s that is plenty.
I use a 2000 DPI mouse and I am sure the sensor doesn't cover an area of more than 5 cm2 when I am playing. That given, I have to move the mouse > 200 times back and forth in under a second, or move the whole 5cm in less than 1/200th of a second before that becomes a problem.
While I believe I may be able to move that fast, I know I can't accurately point that fast. Perhaps others can?
IMO USB polling speed & DPI are the most important measurements. (.. and only to a point there. I find 500MHz polling great, but 125MHz (Windows standard) greatly lacking)
So I think the "most important graph" really isn't that important.
Just my 2 cents.
(Also, I don't know any hardcore gamers who this would matter to that don't keep their mouse sensitivty VERY tight like me -- this may not apply to some mouse users who need a 1 m2 mousepad.)
The premise is actually quite true. With more products touting fancy technologies (optical, laser) and quoting meaningless figures (1000 DPI, 2000 DPI), it is nice that somebody is actually testing these mice to find out how they actually perform. Since the results are not as obvious as one might assume, there actually is justification for benchmarking. Sure, there are other factors such as ergonomics that factor heavily into mice, but that doesn't mean that benchmarks should be ignored. A lot of mice are similar enough in ergonomic design, for example, that the differences in shape are negligible... so then how do you judge between them, especially if there's a difference in price?
The two main criteria that he uses are good, those being "perfect control" and "malfunction speed". The secondary criteria, DPI vs resolution, is bogus however. This is because he uses pixel distance to measure rotational speed, as if rotational speed is based on resolution, which it is not (in a 3d or vector engine). His implication is that each "tick" of mouse movement corresponds with the screen shifting by one pixel, and this is false, as the game engine (should) translate mouse movement according to the game engine's internal units. The renderer determines the granularity of the image, not the granularity of input. His theory implies that lower resolutions = faster mice, which is only true for fixed-scale (i.e. sprite) graphics.
Height, width and depth are pretty much the only important values. At least for me. I find most mice awfully humpy and generally aim for the flattest non-laptop mouse I can get my hands on, which currently is Apple's Mighty Mouse - arguably not a mouse for games which heavily involve both mouse buttons. But it feels good. (BTW, the previous one was a Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse.)
I don't give a shit about number of buttons buttons, DPI or polling speed if the mouse feels like a brick.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Also 125 hz or what?