MS Introduces Optical Mouse

Unknwn writes "Microsoft announced today their new optical mouse, the Intellimouse Explorer. For some reason, they think that optical mice or something new. I have some Sun 3s and Sun 4s lying around which make that a joke... =) " I happen to have an optical mouse at my feet right now. Looks nice, but is it worth $75? I have had the worst luck with MS peripherals (they were gifts!), but I have friends who swear by them...Update: 04/20 03:16 by J : A "concerned" reader wrote us to say that the mouse will not require a special pad like the older opitcal mice. He also said he had a chance to play with it, and that it was quite nice. Anyone else care to share?

Comments

Replace the ball!

[red_dragon]

The way I imagine an optical mouse might work without the funky silvery mouse pad is by using a printed ball, similar to what Logitech does with the TrackMan Marble. In this setup, the light sensors would track the movement of dots printed on the surface of the ball. The rollers would be optional (and not needed).

In an orthogonal subject: Microsoft Intelligence Exploder... :op

why I won't buy MS hardware

[SpiceWare]

Being a long-time OS/2 user I've been on the receiving end of their tactics for quite some time:

• The lock on OEM's that make in impossible for them to sell non-MS operating systems and still remain competitive. I recall reading about an OEM in German that used to sell 30% of their systems preloaded OS/2, that is until they were threatened with higher prices by Microsoft. Only now with the DOJ on Microsoft's back are OEM's starting to offer alternatives such as Linux.
• Threaten stores with the loss of discounts on MS software if any OS/2 software was sold, even if it was special ordered by a customer. By doing so the false perception of there's no software for OS/2 is maintained.
• MS has purchased many companies with the sole purpose of removing their excellent non-MS based software offerings from the market. This has been seen in the OS/2 community as well as more recently in the Java community.
• The continual changes to Windows 3 where the only new feature is to break software running under OS/2's Windows 3 support. (ie the many revisions to win32s.dll)
• Their ability to manipulate the media due to ad dollars. What else could explain reviews that point out how much better OS/2 is in performance and stability over Windows, and yet the conclusion is but your better off staying with Microsoft products?

After experiencing such I refuse to support them by purchasing any of their products, no matter how good they might be, because doing otherwise furthers Microsoft's ability to maintain their stranglehold on the market.

Buy a better mouse-mat

[Utter]

I had you problems until I bought a "3M Precise Mousing Surface". As a bonus you get a really good mouse-mat.

Mice should have feet not taillights!!!

[Baggio]

Obviously not for a green PC then... think about it. If even as much as 40% of the light is reflected back to the optical sensors, then that other 60% is wasted.
The ability of the mouse to track over any surface is a plus to loptop users. If I had a laptop, redirecting the light so as to "capture" most of it on the sensor would be in my favor. Wasted light is wasted power is shorter batter life. Reducing the expended light, and improving the reflected content saves me money in the long run. The taillight is a waste.

I still think that mice should have feet!!! (Honeywell circa 1992)

Time flies like an arrow;

It's not that simple...

[specht]

The mousepad was not really necessary. When I was working with the old Motorola powered Sun3 and the SPARCstation1/2 I had some PostScript files which would produce the grids for the optical mice. You just printed out a page and used it as a very thin mouse pad when the original one got lost.

And it was even possible to use the LCD display of a wrist watch as a mouse pad. We had one customer where we removed the mouse pad so that they were not able to do any damage to the software that was running. So one of the guys working new the workstation figured out that he could move the mouse by using his watch as a very small mouse pad. So we got rid of the mouse completely :-)

Hardware or Software Translation

[tcp]

> a digital signal processor (DSP) translates changes between the images into on-screen movements

Question is, where is the processing done? If in the mouse, that may help explain the price. But my guess is that some processing will be done by the computer its attached to. After all, what if a service pack^H^Hbugfix is needed for it?

This may be the first mouse to require a pentium to use.

Todd

It's not that simple...

[Kaa]

Sun optical mice needed a special cross-hatched mousepad to work. The new MS mouse claims to be able to use any surface at all, your knee included.


Kaa

Optical mice are not new

[ellbee]

Optical mice were developed at Xerox (PARC maybe?) in the dark ages (before TCP/IP, somewhere around the late 70s) and used a set of three LED receivers to determine which axis movement occured on. I use to run them over my jeans, plaid shirts, and fake wood-grained desktops with no problems. We made mouse pads by laminating patterns we'd print on a standard laser printer.

Sun used to ship optical mice (from Mouse House or Mouse Systems) that used two wavelengths of LED for horizontal and vertical movement detection. Those mice required a special mirror-like aluminum pad with stripes that matched the LED's colors.

Sun's mice were shipped long after Xerox had a vastly superior and much simpler product; Xerox could have owned the mouse market along with everything else if they'ed had their act together.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was optical mouse development prior to Xerox; many people were working in the area at the time.