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Multi-Button OpenOfficeMouse At OOoCon 2009
An anonymous reader writes "WarMouse has announced their new multi-button OpenOfficeMouse for OpenOffice.org at the 2009 OOoCon in Orvieto, Italy. The mouse, which features 18 buttons, a scroll wheel, and an analog joystick, has double-click functionality on every button and stores up to 63 application and game profiles in its 512k of flash memory. The OpenOfficeMouse runs on Windows, Linux, and OS X; its customization software will be released as free and open source software." We couldn't decide if this was a protest against Apple's new magic mouse, an elaborate practical joke, or just plain insanity run amok. In any case, it is hard to imagine a world in which so many tiny buttons on a mouse make sense.
Just put a mouse-roller on the damned keyboard instead.
Table-ized A.I.
Perhaps we could just mount a mouse ball on the bottom of a key board. You just move the whole keyboard around when you want to scroll. The 105 button mouse.
All generalizations are false, including this one. Mark Twain
Clearly you don't PvP...
Well Apple just did away with even the 1 button they had on their mouse, so this offering appears to be the opposite end of the spectrum.
Wonder which will a success and which will fail?
when he lays eyes on one of these -- 18 buttons! Seriously, I don't know how I would work this mouse as it looks cramped and it would be like learning a new keyboard layout.
WTF is OS/X? Bastard child of OS/2 and Mac OS X?
It truly is the world of tomorrow... Today!
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
Some guesses:
An insane bicyclist
An insane paraplegic
An insane clown posse (they are all riding in one small car)
Catatonia
Now that the snark is done:
Running amok is characterized by rage. Running around like a chicken with its head cut off isn't the same as running amok.
The more you know....
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
This mouse is a good metaphor for Linux and OSS. Too many choices and very confusing interfaces. Good job guys!
Why bother
the OpenOffice "effort" split into the (clumsy) user interface and (not that good) underlying render library? And make the whole thing available in a more free license?
Instead of coming up with such an ergonomical disaster?
While I resent using Microsoft Office because of its sheer cost (its business model being but a nail in the coffin), I have to admit that the look and feel of the Great Evil(tm) outweighs that of OpenOffice by (hundreds of) miles. Such a pointless effort from the OO staff just makes me wonder whether Sun (or is that Oracle?) just want to ditch OpenOffice altogether. Well, fine, but they could just ditch it by dropping support for it and changing its license so that a real, motivated community take it over and make something really useful out of it.
So here's a better link if you want to see this monstrosity. The guy earlier in this discussion who was joking about putting a mouse wheel on a standard keyboard wasn't far off.
I'm sure if anyone actually buys this a lot of wrist surgeons will rejoice...
#DeleteChrome
It's too bad that hardware built today has little to no ability to just add or remove components as needed instead of designing a sepate piece of hardware for every possible combination. Imagine instead of buying a mouse with 18 buttons and tons of things you may or may not need; you could get a bare bones mouse that you could just clip on new components as you needed. As an analogy, it'd be like snapping lego blocks together to make different things yourself is better than having to buy a specific configuration of blocks that can not be modified. Want a 10 button mouse? get the components together and snap the pieces into place. Hate that trackball after all? swap it out for a laser tracking component instead. The possibilities are nearly endless. Of course, there's already something liek this just not for mice and such yet... Open hardware.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
There already is a mouse like this and it was actually designed much better. The Naga, it has all the standard buttons and then it has another 12 on the side, its an interesting idea and would be rather useful in some gaming situations. They market it to MMO, I also think it would be rather nice to have in RTS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826153054
and you could start considering it for Emacs.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We're doing 19 buttons
Actually, it wasn't that long ago that the scroll wheel was added. I thought that was pretty cool. Also, the side buttons on my mouse are pretty useful while browsing the internet or gaming.
But if you're still attached to your same old mechanical ball-style mouse with only two buttons and no scroll wheel, I guess that's your prerogative.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
Oh look at db32 and his fancy schmancy pencil. Why can't you record information by typing knots in string like everyone else?
Anybody else configuring the HealBot addon for WoW in the back of their mind?
I gave one a try just a couple of days ago.
The good:
The multitouch worked very well. It was very responsive for scrolling and left & right clicking was a breeze. The special mutlitouch motions they included were fun and easy.
The bad:
At this time the mouse doesn't support the pinch motion so no zooming in and out. NO MIDDLE CLICK!!! So if you use middle click to copy/paste into X11 apps this is gone. I did some googling, but I didn't have long with the mouse so I wanted to play as much as possible. I'd have to make sure I had a good solution for the middle click before buying though.
The other thing that was odd in the limited time I got to play, is that as you use the mouse it has a habit of twisting around on your mouse pad. I'd wonder why the mouse was going off at odd angles and then realize that my mouse was sideways again. I'm guessing that is something that would go away with some training and use.
Don't anthropomorphize computers. They *hate* that.
To all of the people who ever said, "OSS should stop copying and start innovating" - this abomination is your fault.
it is hard to imagine a world in which so many tiny buttons on a mouse make sense.
You think that's crazy -- I've heard that some people keep an entire extra grid of buttons next to their mouse that has -- get this -- over *100* buttons. Not only that, but some of the really extreme cases out there actually develop *pure muscle memory* of where all those buttons are. There are even people who call themselves "Eee-Maxers" (sp? e-macksers maybe? emacsers?) who also memorize and even customize dozens of what they call "key chords" -- pressing multiple buttons simultaneously to extend vastly beyond the 100 key limitation.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The prophet says "Thine mouse shall have at most one button"
My girl only has one button and so does my Mac but they are both MULTITOUCH!
Agreeing with the parent post and adding a few extra.
You cannot customize the multi touch features. Two finger swipe goes forward or backward in Safari and goes to the next picture in iPhoto. Hopefully they come out with an ability to determine the function of two finger swipes (and other gestures).
No squeeze buttons. That's taking a long time to get used to.
The mouse is very slender and short which hurts the ergonomics for those with larger than small hands. This is probably the cause of the parents twisting mouse problem
No middle button. Probably the biggest drawback of the mouse.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau