A Microsoft hardware device on my Mac?!? Yeah, I guess so...
Written: Mar 18 '01 (Updated Mar 18 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: No mouse ball; very smooth and precise; Buttons can be fully customized; Mac compatible
Cons: Expensive; may make you uncool with the Mac crowd
The Bottom Line: If you can get beyond the name on the box, this is probably one of the most useful things you can attach to your Mac.
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| adjensen's Full Review: Microsoft Intelli Explorer (B75-00001) Mouse |
When I bought my iBook, I didn't bother buying a mouse, as it has a built in track pad. After realizing that it would be desk bound 90% of the time, I swiped an old iMac USB mouse from work.
It didn't take too long to realize why the mouse had been put on the "get rid of this junk pile" -- it was round, so you didn't know which direction you were moving, and the mouse ball was sticky and hard to roll.
Being the "live with it" person that I am, I tolerated that for about three months, but it got to the point where it didn't work half the time, so I popped up to Best Buy to get a replacement.
Now, I've got the Intellimouse Optical for my PC and thought that it worked pretty well, so I was willing to try the same on the iBook. Unfortunately, that $29 item was out of stock (convenient!) and the only USB optical mouse they had was this one, for $60, with a $10 rebate that drops it down to $50.
I'm not really sure what the differences between these two mice are, except that the expensive one is silver and has two extraneous buttons on the left side instead of one on each side. Frankly, I think you'd do fine with the cheaper one.
What's nice about these mice:
Form
Ergonomic (to some extent,) this feels good in your hand. Unless you spend vast amounts of time with your mouse, this isn't really critical (how you hold your hand, arm and wrist has far more impact on repetitive motion injuries) but it does feel comfortable.
Precision
You can leave the "speed" settings (really, precision) on whatever the Mac system is set to, or you can override it with more specific Microsoft settings. I opted to go with the MS settings, and you can really control how fast this moves. It's very helpful.
No moving parts
No moving parts means no sticky ball, no dust and crud stuck inside the mouse, and (for me) most importantly, no mousepad. You can run the thing on the back of your left hand if you want to. That will be convenient for portable usage. You can use a mousepad, of course, but you can just run it on the desktop if you want to (it doesn't appear to scratch it.)
Fully programmable buttons
Through a Control Panel, you can change the function of any of the five buttons. You can have custom settings for different applications, so the same button that does a "Back" command in Internet Explorer can be a "Page Down" in Codewarrior or a "Find Again" in BBEdit. Very nice.
The scroll wheel is a very handy thing to have. Again, you have complete control over how far the thing scrolls, including differences between scrolling with it pressed down or not. The wheel is smart enough to know where you're trying to scroll -- for example, while writing this review, if the mouse is in the "enter text area" of the page, my review scrolls; if it's outside that area, the whole page scrolls.
On the downside, the practical joker in me can see the fun in reprogramming someone else's mouse so that all of the buttons do something odd in certain programs. Better watch out for someone like me around your computer unattended for a while!
Finally, having a right mouse button that brings up context sensitive menus is very useful. Although these menus have been on the MacOS for quite some time, they're not used much because you have to press the Control key on the keyboard before clicking, and no one remembers that.
Lights
Okay, totally superfluous, but the red light that oozes from the bottom of this thing looks pretty cool, especially at night.
The Mac connection
It's a USB device, which means that you can just plug it into the Mac and it will work like a normal mouse. It comes with a CD that you need to install (with one reboot) to get the specific features like custom buttons and scroll wheel.
For the non-Mac (and non-USB) inclined, there is a serial to USB converter in the box that you will need to hook it up to your machine. I didn't bother installing the software on my Wintel box, but I can't imagine that being a problem.
And, on the downside of this mouse:
Price
At $50, this isn't cheap, by any stretch of the imagination. However, temper that with the fact that it's something you're going to use constantly, so the better made and configured it is, the better off your computer experience is going to be.
Microsoft
Although I'm not an anti-MS person, never discount the fact that there are people who are going to rag on you incessantly for having the audacity to hook a Microsoft device up to your Mac. They'll equate it with inviting Beelzebub to Mass. Tell 'em to get bent.
If Apple made a mouse as good as this, I'd buy it. But Steve Jobs is of the mind that one button is good enough for anyone, so I guess that to better utilize your computer, you'll have to go elsewhere.
Conclusion
Between the precision, lack of moving parts and the ability to custom set all of the buttons, I really love this mouse. This is the kind of thing that Apple should include in the box rather than the terrible iMac hockey puck mouse.
For doing things like surfing the Internet (what do you think the 'i' in 'iMac' stood for?) the mouse is the primary input device. The easier that is to use, the better the whole computer experience will be.
And for me, the Microsoft Intellimouse with optical input, is the easist and best mouse I've ever used.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 50
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Epinions.com ID:
adjensen
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Member: a.d. jensen
Location: Grand Forks, ND USA
Reviews written: 143
Trusted by: 111 members
About Me:
Now blogging reviews at http://kandsmil.blogspot.com/
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