Upcoming Microsoft Peripherals

[Onomatopoeic]

A couple of interesting "just around the corner" (read: "sometime before the December gift-giving season") mouses from MS:

The first is a “presentation mouse” that has a presentation laser pointer built into the mouse. It also has multimedia controls (i.e. – “Back,” “Forward,” Stop,” Start,” etc) built into the bottom of the mouse. You just pick up the mouse, turn it over (the mouse's XY tracking laser automatically turns itself off when it senses that the mouse is upside down), and start using the laser pointer and/or the multimedia controls! The laser pointer button has the yellow star on it.

They are pushing this mouse to the notebook-based presenter crowd using PowerPoint, but you could certainly use it with a desktop workstation for multimedia purposes or for a "fixed" presentation workstaton station in a conference room / classroom environment.

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=085






Also, a new ergonomic “Natural” mouse (using Natural Keyboard design philosophies), called the Wireless Natural Mouse 8000.

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=086




This new hardware introduces a new version of mouse driver that supports a new and interesting function called Instant Viewer.

“Too many open items on your desktop? Click the scroll wheel button to instantly display your open windows, then point and click to select.“


I also noticed that all the new Microsoft mouses have a batter level indicator now. It’s located near the top of the mouse.


All the upcoming MS keyboard and mouse products:

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/comingsoon.aspx

 

[Tannin]

I hate when they do that! Release all these spiffy new products, but don't release a decent trackball. Do you know that, to the best of my knowledge, there is not even one decent trackball on the market now? All this spiffy new technology, yet the only three or four really well-designed trackballs (and a well-designed trackball beats a mouse absolutely hollow) are all out of production:

* Logitech Trackman Vista
* Microsoft Intellimouse Trackball
* Kengsington .. er ... I forget the name, the vibrating one.
* Couple of other Logitech ones that weren't bad

All were products of their era and had faults that would be child's play to put right now:

The Trackman Vista had no scrolly wheel and was mechanical, not laser

The Intellimouse Trackball was mechanical, and the right button is in the wrong place, but you can get used to that.

The Kengsington Whasaname ... oh yeah, Orbit was mechanical, had no scrolly wheel, and also had a stupid vibrating gizmo, but so long as you didn't load the drivers it was inactive and worked fine.

The least worst of the remaining ones are the Kensington Expert Mouse (uncomfortable square shape, ball much to heavy and oversized), and the Logitech ... er .. forget the name, the thumbball one. Thumballs are nowhere near as good as fingerballs, but at least better than mice. I'm using a few of these now because I can't buy anything better.

Sigh

 

[Dïscfärm]

I like the Logitech Marblemouse trackball the best, mainly because you can use it equally as good sitting down or standing up.

The Intellimouse Trackball was mechanical...

I sort of recall the final generation or two of the MS Intellimouse Trackball (Microsoft exited the trackball business a couple of years ago) used a laser to track the ball movements.

 

[ddrueding]

...that would be because trackballs suck. They're even worse than touchpads, and barely better than a joy-nipple. :runs:

 

[Buck]

...that would be because trackballs suck.

Indeed, they do! A regular mouse works just fine. Now, when it comes to keyboards, nothing beats an ergo variety so hands can be placed properly.

 

[GIANT]

I also noticed that all the new Microsoft mouses have a batter level indicator now. It’s located near the top of the mouse.

That should read: BATTERY.

...that would be because trackballs suck.

I wouldn't normally bother using a trackball with a typical desktop workstation setup. However, trackballs are often great to use with a notebook computer, or a desktop (or server) system with a keyboard and monitor located in a cramped little environment.

 

[ddrueding]

Indeed, they do! A regular mouse works just fine. Now, when it comes to keyboards, nothing beats an ergo variety so hands can be placed properly.

I spend maybe 30% of my time at a keyboard at someone else's keyboard. Therefore getting used to my special stuff would just frustrate me the rest of the time. Even if you don't use other people's PCs it probably makes switching to your laptop more frustrating.

 

[ddrueding]

I use a big mouse (Logitech MX1000), and even at a relatively slow speed, it can traverse my entire desktop without any of it hanging off the edge of a 3.5" HDD. No desk space at all? It also works fine on my (admittedly oversized) thigh. Any space savings achieved by a trackball are insignificant.

 

[Tannin]

That isn't a relatively slow speed. That is sudden death mousing. Either that or you are running 640 x 480.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm comfortable with any pointing device someone puts in front of me. Trackpads are fine. Joynipples are fine. Stylus and tablet arrangements are dandy. Mice are annoying for requiring desk space and actual arm movement, but whatever. I'll even sort of tolerate the bletcherous forefinger trackballs that Tannin likes.

It takes between two and four hours to get used to something different. It's worth the time, because you never know what you'll run in to.

But the Logitech Trackman Marble+ is the one true pointing device. All others pointy-things genuflect before it. It has exactly the right number of buttons (three), and does not require me to take a forefinger for the cross-purposes of both clicking AND mousing.

And unlike Tannin, I have a storage container full of my favorite pointing device. At the rate they break, over the number of PCs I use them on, I'll run out in about 2018.

 

[Tannin]

I have bought piles of the bloody things, Merc, but they lead a hard life in the workshop and I've worn out/broken dozens, so there are only a handful left. (Bear in mind that most were the old-style mechanical ones, which have a limited working life.) Just this week, I ordered 3 Trackman Marbles because this is the least-worst option left. I don't much like the thumbball arrangement, but there is nothing else that's even half-good, except maybe the huge and clumsy Expert Mouse Pro that P5 loves.

Problems with the Trackman marble:

1: Thumb, not forefinger. Your finger is much more richly endowed with nerves, is faster and more precise. This is why you will never see a trained sports timekeeper triggering a stopwatch with his thumb: you are taught to use your forefinger because it has better reflexes. I've been using a thumbball on my primary machine for about 6 months and am as used to it as I'm ever going to get. It's OK, but just OK. Still, better than a mouse, of course. Re the buttons and the fingers, the ideal arrangement uses:

Thumb: left button
Forefinger: ball
Middle finger: right button and/or scrolly wheel (your choice)
Ring finger: right button (or nothing, as preffered)

Of course, this is a matter of individual taste. The Microsoft Intellimouse Trackball used the thumb for both left and right buttons, middle finger for the wheel. Weird and sub-optimal, but you get used to it.

2: the buttons are too sensitive. Relax, let your hand rest on it, and if you are not careful you start getting unintended button presses.

Other that those two things, it is indeed excellent. Like any trackball, you can use it anywhere, which is nice to have with a desktop, and utterly essential with a laptop.

The thing that bugs me is that at least 3 major manufacturers have already got the basic design of the perfect trackball right, and then for reasons that utterly baffle me, stopped making it! Drives me nuts!

BTW, Logirtech do make a fingerball, but it's total crap. Tea could design a better one after 17 pink gins, holding the pencil in her her left foot and singing the national anthem.

 

[Buck]

BTW, Logirtech do make a fingerball, but it's total crap. Tea could design a better one after 17 pink gins, holding the pencil in her her left foot and singing the national anthem.

That! I would pay money to see.

 

[Corvair]

OK. I just retrieved my two Logitech trackballs. The ivory one is about 5 years older than the silver-grey one -- which is now 1 year old.

Both TRACKBALLS say on the bottom "Marble Mouse USB."

Both of these trackballs have two large and long buttons (one on each side), but the newer one has an extra set on tiny buttons along the top edge of the two large left/right buttons. The tiny buttons are for backwards / forwards for browsers and application programs that are aware of backwards / forwards buttons and can use them. Being that trackballs are having a fairly rough time in the marketplace, I wanted two of these just models just in case one got squashed or something.

...I spend maybe 30% of my time at a keyboard at someone else's keyboard. Therefore getting used to my special stuff would just frustrate me the rest of the time...

When I venture out into server farms, I like to bring along my little M$ Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 3000 mouse, which is supposed to be a "notebook mouse." This mouse is far better than most of the crappy trackballs built into drawer-mounted server KVMs. All I need to find is a small flat surface to push it around on. It has its own little USB transceiver that fits into the bottom surface of the mouse. When you pull little USB transceiver out of the bottom of the mouse, it turns on the little optical sensor. The USB transceiver then gets plugged into an available USB port. No drivers are needed on modern computers running modern operating systems -- as far as I know. Win2K3 and Win2K/SP4 recognise the USB transceiver and mouse without problem.


http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=070&active_tab=overview

 

[Tannin]

I have bought piles of the bloody things, Merc, but they lead a hard life in the workshop and I've worn out/broken dozens, so there are only a handful left. (Bear in mind that most were the old-style mechanical ones, which have a limited working life.) Just this week, I ordered 3 Trackman Marbles because this is the least-worst option left. I don't much like the thumbball arrangement, but there is nothing else that's even half-good, except maybe the huge and clumsy Expert Mouse Pro that P5 loves.

Problems with the Trackman marble:

1: Thumb, not forefinger. Your finger is much more richly endowed with nerves, is faster and more precise. This is why you will never see a trained sports timekeeper triggering a stopwatch with his thumb: you are taught to use your forefinger because it has better reflexes. I've been using a thumbball on my primary machine for about 6 months and am as used to it as I'm ever going to get. It's OK, but just OK. Still, better than a mouse, of course. Re the buttons and the fingers, the ideal arrangement uses:

Thumb: left button
Forefinger: ball
Middle finger: right button and/or scrolly wheel (your choice)
Ring finger: right button (or nothing, as preffered)

Of course, this is a matter of individual taste. The Microsoft Intellimouse Trackball used the thumb for both left and right buttons, middle finger for the wheel. Weird and sub-optimal, but you get used to it.

2: the buttons are too sensitive. Relax, let your hand rest on it, and if you are not careful you start getting unintended button presses.

Other that those two things, it is indeed excellent. Like any trackball, you can use it anywhere, which is nice to have with a desktop, and utterly essential with a laptop.

The thing that bugs me is that at least 3 major manufacturers have already got the basic design of the perfect trackball right, and then for reasons that utterly baffle me, stopped making it! Drives me nuts!

BTW, Logirtech do make a fingerball, but it's total crap. Tea could design a better one after 17 pink gins, holding the pencil in her her left foot and singing the national anthem.

 

[Tea]

Tea could design a better one after 17 pink gins, holding the pencil in her her left foot and singing the national anthem.

No I couldn't. For starters, I write better with my pointing-at-the-ground paws than I do with my pointing-up-in-the-air paws. And secondly, 17 pink gins ain't hardly getting started. But the actual reality is ... I couldn't do it, drunk or sober. I don't know the national anthem.

 

[Mercutio]

http://www.nla.gov.au/epubs/waltzingmatilda/

 

[Tannin]

That, unfortunately, is not the Australian national anthem. Stupid, stupid, stupid decision. I'd rather stand up for God save the Queen than the pox-ridden dirge we are supposed to sing. Indeed, I'm damned if I'll stand up for it or respect it in any way.

 

[Tea]

I agree with Tannin. I don't know it and I refuse to learn it, except possibly one of Tannin's slightly-corrected-for-accuracy versions. Besides, in my case, the actual, visible physical difference between standing up and sitting down is largely a matter of opinion. Comes of having short legs.

 

[Tannin]

Australia's national anthem (with the smallest possible corrections for truth and accuracy)

Australians all (well some of us) let us rejoice,

For we are young (well, actually the oldest continent on earth, with the oldest continuous civilisation on earth, so not in the slightest young) and free (except for our massive foreign debt and thus inability to make any of our own economic decisions and quasi-enslavement to the United States of America, which leaves us unable to make many of our own political decisions either),

With golden soil (actually reddish-orange in the main, or if we are to take "golden" to mean "richly productive" as is probably intended, the oldest, poorest, least productive soils on planet earth) and wealth for toil (actually, most of our income (which isn't really large enough to call "wealth" unless we are using 3rd world standards) derives from very short-term exploitation of two fast-dwindling assets, what remains of our arable soil (which is rapidly being depleted by over-grazing, over-watering, and general mismanagement) and minerals - in both cases, extracted by a tiny minority of Australians, largely for the economic benefit of an even tinier minority of foreign owners),

Our home is girt by sea.

---------

Well, one line right out of four isn't so bad - 25% is a pass mark isn't it? Assuming that we know who Girt is, and why she cares.

Shall I go on?

 

[Tea]

Errr ... he can't go on. Doesn't know the rest of the words. Which, now that I come to think about it, is one of the things I respect about Tannin. He never did take kindly to bullshit.

 

[Mercutio]

Tea, why does your elephant have green rubber boots?
And how did you get them on the elephant?
And who let you have an elephant in the first place?

 

[Tannin]

Which, my dear ape, makes it quite extraordinary that I continue to be fond of you!

 

[Tea]

1: Because there weren't any red ones.
2: One foot at a time.
3: With elephants, it's not really a matter of "let". It just sort of happens. One day I was out innocently walking past one of Ballarat's larger banana plantations (only eating ones that were hanging out over the fence of course) and it followed me home.

 

[ddrueding]

...(only eating ones that were hanging out over the fence of course) and it followed me home.

Or, more likely, followed the bannanas you were still holding onto home.

 

[sechs]

Is that really the Australian national anthem? I thought Canada's kind of sucked....

 

[LOST6200]

Bah! I don;t want no funky, moderm naturlich mice and etc. Theyll have to bury me with the PS12 Intelimouse 1.3A.

 

[Explorer]

...PS12 Intelimouse 1.3A.

I've had one of those PS/2 IntelliMouse mouses back in the early '90s. But, I had an MS mouse model or two before that one, going all the way back to the first (large) cream/chocolate MS Mouse with a RS-232 serial interface from about 1987. I got that one as a bundle with Windows 1.x a several months before Windows 2.0 was released. Later on, MS introduced the "dove bar" IntelliMouse series.

 

[Tea]

Are we talking square ones here, Explorer? Tannin remembers square ones. Not sure about the colour.

 

[Explorer]

Are we talking square ones here, Explorer? Not sure about the colour.

They were a kinda sorta block-like wedgie thing -- not really square. They were larger than a Macintosh mouse. My fuzzy memory now tells me the cream/chocolate coloured mouse was the second MS mouse that was rounder, but still large. That first one was just white.

One major improvement I noticed immediately on the next MS Mouse model was the two clicker buttons did not protrude so high above the mouse body surface. Of course, later on (as today) the mouse buttons barely -- if at all -- protrude above the surface.

Back in the times of the first and second MS mouse, MS was pushing 2-button mouses, Apple was pushing 1-button mouses, and several others were pushing 3-button mouses. I don't particularly miss that Mouse War era.

 

[Tea]

OK, I pulled Tannin's snout out of the lunchtime trough long enough to extract the following information:

* He remembers the second one you describe clearly, now that you have stirred up a few of his elderly RNA molecules.
* Not sure about the 1st one. Probably has to do with destruction of said RNA molecules by various other sorts of molecules not normally mentioned in a family show like this one
* The square one he was thinking of was a Genius 3-button affair which was, then as now, decidedly poxy. (Don't you love it how some companies never change?)

Don't think I'll get too much more out of him today: he seems grumpy.

 

[Corvair]

Yes, there was Genius, IMSI, MSC, and Logitech, and a few others. Some of these mouses came bundled with software. More distant memories surfacing now: I recall another one of those getting-a-mouse-bundled-with-the-software deals when I bought (gulp) the "Gem" graphical interface from Digital Research, which are the same people that later brought the world the DR-DOS operating system. But, anyway, back to meeses.

The mouses that I really hated back then were the optical ones. Those required a grid-patterned mouse pad to operate. The early Sun workstations I used had those damned things, and then they started coming out for PC machinery. Logitech mechanics were generally alright back then, but I frequently had problems with Logitech's cables going bad.

 

[Tea]

Listening from a safe distance outside Tannin's pen, I hear "grumble grumble slurp slurp HONEYWELL! Remember them well slurp grumble slop"

 

[LOST6200]

I've had one of those PS/2 IntelliMouse mouses back in the early '90s...

No, it is the newer ones with the central control wheel That was still the best shape ever to the right hand like mines. I hvae also the last version of that style in the USB. If only the y had continuted and made an optical version in that shap instead on going to the symetrical ones... I'd have one custponm made if it wer not too expensive.

 

[Mercutio]

I still have a Honeywell mouse with feet. I pull it out to show my students. The damned thing refuses to die, and much like an optical, it can be used on any surface.

 

[Dïscfärm]

I've saw a few Honeywell mouses back in the day, but have never used one.

I believe those used a transducer that measured changes in capacitance between the transducer and the desk surface when the mouse moved around -- instead of optics or a ball.

 

[LiamC]

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2843

Meeces to pieces

 

[Tannin]

I thought they wre optical, Didn't you have to have aspecial grid-lined pad for them? Or am I remembering something else.

 

[GIANT]

Meeces to pieces

I've picked up a Logitech Revolution, but I have not actually used one.


1.) It's expensive.

2.) I suspect my "large" hands would eventually not like it so much. Actually, I would give this mouse a 50/50 chance of working out in the long run.