The Bottom Line: Lightweight, comfortable, affordably, and easy to use, this pointing device is reliable workhorse designed to work with both Windows and Macintosh OS.xx platforms.
vemartin's Full Review: Microsoft Wheel Optical (D66-00021) Mouse
Over the years I have learned that a computer mouse is not just a mouse; it in many ways defines your computing experience. A smooth running mouse is a joy to work with, while a mouse that skips, jitters, and has a mind of its own can tack minutes or even hours onto a project. Most of this was due to dirty mouse balls and rollers inside the body of the mouse, and could be easily resolved by cleaning the mouse.
Then came the optical mouse and all of that went away; no more dirty mice balls, they have bee replaced by a camera of all things. Now is use nothing but optical mice, mostly from Logitech, but at work I use the Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical, a pointing device that shipped with the Hewlett Packard Compaq Business Desktop d530 computers we recently rolled out at work.
Technical Interlude; How an Optical Mouse Works:
An optical mouse replaces the traditional ball assembly found in the standard mouse with a microchip, a miniature red light, and a camera. The red light illuminates the work surface, hence the red glow associated with optical mice, the camera takes 1500 images a second, and the microchip reports these minute changes in the mice’s position to the computer. This in turn leads to smoother, more accurate mouse cursor operation.
The tiny holy on the bottom of an optical mouse houses the camera and another opening immediately to the rear of the camera houses the red light. An optical mouse can theoretically work on any surface, but seem to work on light colored or white surfaces better.
The Mouse
The Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical is a standard two button white mouse with a grey scroll wheel, used for scrolling through long web pages or multi-page documents half a page at a time. This wheel is located in the middle of the buttons positioned at the front of the mouse. The bottom of the mouse is mad of grey semi-clear plastic with a red clear plastic adorning the rear of the mouse. When the computer is on the rear of the mouse glows with red light, and in a darkened room looks similar to a laser. This serves no useful purpose other then to look cool.
The Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical is designed to work with Windows and Macintosh platforms and ships with a USB connection, but also a green PS/2 converter to allow you to plug the mouse into a standard IBM PS/2 port. Utilizing USB (Versions 1.0 /1.1 /2.0), the Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical is a plug-n-play device and as such can be removed and plugged back in without having to reboot or otherwise shout down the computer. A PS/2 connection however, is not always plug-n-play and it is best to leave the connection attached during normal computer operations.
Anyone familiar with standard mouse operation will readily take to the Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical. By default the left hand button is used to double-click, while the right hand button is used to right click on a Windows desktop and produce a menu. Microsoft does ship software—Intellimouse Version 4.2—with the Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical, but you can use the pointing device without it. The software, which requires some 6MB of hard drive space, allows you to program the mouse with certain controls not avail by default. For instance, the left and right buttons can be reassigned enabling them to emulate certain keyboard commands or shortcuts such as cut, copy, paste, etc.
However Windows XP users benefit from having almost all of the functionality of Intellimouse built into the Operating System. For instance you can change the look and feel of the mouse pointer, switch the button functionality, turn on mouse trails, and set other options without installing Intellimouse. My recommendation is to skip it.
Unlike earlier versions of the Microsoft Mouse that tended to be designed for right handed folk (I am left handed), the Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical is decidedly straight so that I can be used with either hand. And the above mentioned ability to switch the functionality of the buttons further enhances the mousse ambidextrous abilities. Indeed the mouse feels comfortable in the hand; it is not too big, or too small.
Conclusion
For a general purpose optical mouse, the Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical is hard to beat. Lightweight, comfortable, affordably, and easy to use, this pointing device is reliable workhorse designed to work with both Windows and Macintosh OS.xx platforms.
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