MS Wireless IntelliCRAP Explorer 2.0 Mouse
Written: Sep 22 '05 (Updated Sep 23 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Dirt cheap, optical, decent battery life, many ugly designs to choose from
Cons: Hard-to-press buttons, tilt-wheel, and mouse shape are all anti-ergonomic. No tactile feedback on scroll wheel.
The Bottom Line: I can't stress this enough: DON'T BUY THIS PIECE OF JUNK.
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| puter's Full Review: Microsoft Wireless Intelli Explorer (M03-00044) Mo... |
Unlike with previous corded+wireless duos from Microsoft, the IntelliMouse Explorer 4.0 and Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer 2.0 are virtually identical--except for the cord.
A Match Made in Heaven
Until about a year ago, you could have more or less called me a Microsoft Hardware fanboy. I have loved MS input devices ever since I bought my first original Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard for $60 OEM back around 1995 or 1996. I loved my comfortable, daisy-chainable Microsoft SideWinder gamepads and continued to use them for another year or two after Microsoft officially stopped supporting all of their gaming input devices in order to focus on supporting their new Xbox. If you recall my review of the original IntelliMouse Explorer, you also know that I absolutely fell in love with the first-ever optical mouse.
The Ultimate Betrayal
Given Microsoft's billions of dollars of net worth, tons of brilliant employees, and need to remain competitive with Logitech and all the no-name manufacturers in a cut-throat industry, you'd expect that Microsoft would continue with their excellent engineering and produce yet another amazing mouse, right? WRONG. This is, hands-down, the WORST mouse I have ever used, and that's saying a lot.
MS Hardware has Lost its Focus
Yeah, Mom has always wanted one of those fancy leather mice, right? Did you even know you could get a mouse with leather before I told you just now? Sorry, but it's true: I have seen this same mouse in dark blue, standard silver, hippie orange, bloodstain crimson, leather (probably genuine synthetic, no doubt!), and what I have dubbed The Matrix and Spider-Man. I may have still missed a couple of designs, but you get the point. They wasted too much time trying to make these things pretty and not enough time making them work. Microsoft was so eager for a radical redesign of their mouse that they actually took all the good stuff that they did on their previous mice, and threw it out the window. The same goes for most of the new models of keyboards they've released in the past 5 years, but I'll save that little discussion for another time.
Why Logitech Loves this Mouse
Any serious gamer will want to take a shotgun to this mouse (scratch that; they'll want a BFG instead) after no more than 5 minutes of using it. Anyone else will simply want to throw it in the trash. The immediately obvious shortcomings:
1. No tactile feedback on scroll wheel. Typically, when you use the scroll wheel on any other mouse, you can feel the discrete tick-tick-tick as a little pressure lever inside the mouse skips over some grooves in the axle of the wheel. This new scroll wheel has none of that, so you can't tell how far you've scrolled. For gamers, this means you also can't tell just by feel how many weapons you have cycled through by giving that wheel a spin. In Halo, that means I often cycle to my alternate weapon and back again (you only carry 2 guns at a time), and never actually get a chance to shoot my alternate weapon at the enemy before he mops up the floor with me.
2. Tilt doesn't work. I'm not just saying it doesn't work in games...if that were the only problem, all you'd have to do is wait for new games or maybe a software patch. No, what I'm saying is that it's very awkward to use the tilt wheel, and you have to press it very hard from side to side in order for it to actually do anything.
3. Scroll wheel is too hard to click. By focusing too much on the tilt wheel feature, Microsoft ruined their scroll wheel completely. It is now so incredibly hard to click the wheel that you'll often think you clicked it only to find out a couple seconds later that it didn't actually click at all. It wouldn't surprise me if it actually requires a couple pounds of pressure to click the wheel. In fact, it's so hard to click that I often end up scrolling inadvertently before the wheel actually clicks. In Halo that means #1 that I can't throw grenades, and #2 that I often switch grenades and switch weapons without even realizing it.
4. Main buttons too hard to click. As if it wasn't enough to make the scroll wheel virtually impossible to click, Microsoft also made the left and right buttons hard to click. The left button is definitely harder to click than my original IntelliMouse Explorer's button ever was, and the right button is even harder to click than the left button (but not nearly as hard to click as the scroll wheel).
5. Bye-bye ergonomics. Like many people, I grew up using my middle finger to right-click. Then came the scroll wheel, and my middle finger started doing double-duty using the scroll wheel and the right mouse button. Then came the Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer 2.0 and its anti-ergonomic shape, forcing me to have hand cramps and to either smush my pinkie ring finger, or to use my ring finger to right-click. Needless to say, I hate this, and while I have tried for nearly a year on-and-off to use the mouse this way, I still can't stand it. So I end up smushing my ring finger and pinkie.
Almost not worth mentioning
There are also a couple of almost-good things, but they're also almost not worth mentioning, given the glaring problems mentioned above. But here they are, nonetheless:
1. 10-ft range
2. easy to set up (press a button on the receiver and mouse, and voila! you've got wireless)
3. can run on just 1 AA battery in a pinch
4. will run on NiMH rechargeable AA batteries
5. decent battery life; one pair of NiMH rechargeables will last 3-5 months, maybe about 10-15 hours a week
6. side buttons easy to click (WOW, isn't it amazing!?!?)
7. optical tracking is no worse than previous models of MS optical mice
8. driver pops up a notification when the mouse batteries are dead (well DUH, thanks Sherlock!)
If you buy this, you WILL regret it
Unfortunately, Microsoft has really fallen in the past couple of years when it comes to the input device wars with Logitech, and Microsoft's IntelliMouse Explorer 4.0 and Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer 2.0 are only the beginning. I have found that other models of tilt-wheel mice made by the company in the past year or so, including the Optical Mouse w/Tilt-wheel and Wireless Optical Mouse w/Tilt-wheel, are also afflicted. I used this mouse for nearly a year and the mouse did not get broken in and the buttons were just as hard to push the last time I used it as they were the first time I used it. Eventually my hand stopped cramping up as much when I used it, but I had also cut down significantly on how much I used it.
On a brighter note, I finally put my mouse out of its misery after I decided I wouldn't wish this sorry excuse for a pointing device on even my worst enemy. Just tonight I introduced my Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer 2.0 to Mister Concrete Basement Floor. They didn't get along very well, so I let them settle their differences in a fight to the death. The floor won.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 20
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Epinions.com ID:
puter
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Member: Rob
Reviews written: 18
Trusted by: 5 members
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