There’s no accounting for taste, they say. And that may be the reason BMW Group subsidiary DesignworksUSA decided to partner up with Thermaltake to produce what you see above. It’s a mouse, and it’s called the Level 10 M gaming mouse. M… I think as in BMW dared use the M nomenclature on a mouse. In my eyes it looks incredibly contrived and needlessly complex, although again, I’m sure there are those who will go “gee-whiz, that’s a fine looking mouse, yes sir-e-bob”! And that’s ok, let me just stick to the facts. For one, the upper plate is height and angle adjustable through the turn of a knob. It’s also perforated, to tackle sweaty palms.
It’s going to be released this spring, but there’s no word on price.
The market for gaming mice is very healthy these days. Anyone making gaming devices, wishing to garner more than a sliver of purchases from the gaming world at large has to do something pretty amazing, or do something subtle really well. Logitech has tackled the latter with their latest G300 gaming mouse. The G300 doesn’t have an excessive amount of buttons or an obscene amount of DPI resolution or wildly adjustable parts. What it does have is class and the ability to suit both left and right handed players without looking like a cybernetic monstrosity. “Less is more” doesn’t do the G300 justice as they do more with less, better than most competitors do with “way too much”.
The G300 sports 9 programmable buttons, much more than can usually be supported by ambidextrous enabled devices, and doesn’t waste time on excessive programming support. Many of us gamers getting into our golden years don’t have the time or the patience to deal with tweaking to that level. Maybe it does it more justice to call this a mature mouse than an unsophisticated one. It has clean lines and an almost too narrow body that help fingers easily locate all the buttons. The G300 does add an uncharacteristically gamer-ish backlighting which is giving more sway to the Razer style that Logitech normally does. The only other ‘tamed’ feature that might actually be missed is the 1990′s era scroll wheel.
Everyone knows that clowns like to have oversized accessories. I mean, just look at their shoes, or ties. It kind of makes you wonder whether or not they have other oversized things at home. I like to think that this Giant USB Mouse from Brando is what every clown uses when they’re working on the computer.
Take away the glowing LEDs and the fact that you could easily operate it with two hands, and you have yourself a plain old boring wired mouse. But when it’s that big, do you really need it to do anything else to justify the $20 price tag? I think not.
Researchers at the Tokyo Metropolitan University have developed a method for determining stress levels that can fit inside a computer mouse. It uses a pulse-wave sensor to measure bloodflow in the fingertip by bouncing infrared light off your flesh and analyzing the variations. And while bloodflow itself is not a marker of stress (certain hormone levels are), the researchers have found a correlation between the stability in your cardiac rhythm and these hormone levels, 70% of the time.
Of course this begs the question of why anyone would want to know how stressed they are, not to mention that any given person is likely already aware of their stress levels without a device having to tell them. At least that’s what you’d like to think, but the truth is that we really don’t pay that much attention. We trudge through our days rarely making an effort to manage our stress. This device could help harness the power of feedback loops, much like newer street signs showing you your actual speed (even though you can easily glance at your speedometer) have proven to be effective at slowing motorists down. We can envision a program that constantly monitors you and flashes a warning sign when it’s time to cool off.
The entertainment value of such a system of course would pale in comparison with the fun to be had watching your cubicle neighbor finally lose it in a fit of keyboard smashing melodrama.
Presumably in response to the Apple Magic Mouse which mates a multi-touch touchpad to the top surface of a desktop mouse, we now have access to Microsoft’s take on the idea. The almost all-terrain BluTrack laser is heart of the Microsoft Touch Mouse and its performance isn’t in question. The BluTrack system is a proven performer on just about any surface and only sips on batteries delivering long life. The top of the mouse, from the button area to the rear palm-swell are all touch sensitive. With two thirds of the mouse being touch sensitive, Redmond has delivered a handful (pun-intended) of gestures to leave that old school, mechanical, 3 button number in the dust.
The gestures are enabled by software, which are currently only available for Windows 7. They are not currently highly configurable but that may change over time. There are only about 10 available gestures including single finger scrolling and a clever forward/backward thumb control. Custom gestures are not currently on the road map for this device but software upgrades and later models may evolve to this function. Only recently available to consumers, previous impressions were from brief exposures at trade shows and have been mixed. While many have been ready for the touch enabled surface, many are hesitant once they feel the absence of tactile buttons. For a more thorough review of how it fared after prolonged use surf over to Everything USB.
There are plenty of gaming mice on the market, so how do you choose the one that’s right for you. Maybe you want one that looks good, or perhaps you need a lot of extra buttons for your macros. Unfortunately, if you’re a leftie, your choices become rather limited, due to the design of most mice. Thankfully NZXT knows how much of an issue this can be, and they have released the Avatar S, which can be used with either hand.
The “S” stands for “small”, which may or may not be a good thing. If you’ve got smaller hands, then you’re probably going to love this mouse. If not, you could be facing some serious hand cramps after a couple hours of gaming. If you want the full scoop on this mouse, head over to GamerFront to check out the complete review.
Of all the PC peripherals that gobble up your precious desk space, the flatbed scanner has to be the worst offender. If there happens to be one on your desk right now, I’m sure it’s buried under a mountain of papers and other crap that has to be cleared off on the rare occasion you actually need to scan something. So LG has done a real solid for anyone who hates desktop clutter. Their new LSM-100 Smart Scan mouse has a scanning head built into it, so it just takes a couple of passes back and forth whenever you have a document to scan.
It’s obviously not as easy as just slapping a page on a scanner bed and hitting go, but I’m assuming it comes with the necessary software to automatically stitch several passes of a scanned document together for you. It’s also got some OCR capabilities, which is a must have for any scanner, and the ability to spit out documents to a wide variety of formats. The $150 price tag (available at the end of August in Europe and internationally a little later) might not appeal to everybody though. Particularly since I’m going to assume this mouse has some extra bulk and heft to it, which can’t be fun to push around all day.
When you’re spending hours at your computer working on a research paper, you’re going to wish you had something a little more comfortable than the standard mouse that came with the PC. Why not get something that’s specifically designed with ergonomics in mind, like this Whirl mouse from Smartfish? Better yet, why not let us give one to you?
We’re continuing our back-to-school giveaways this week by offering up three Smartfish Whirls. No, you’re not going to be greedy and get them all to yourself. What do you need with three mice anyway? Instead, we will pick three different winners and send a new Whirl to each of them. Just drop a comment below, and we’ll pick a winner this Friday. Good luck!
Well, it’s Friday, and I promised to hand out mice to three lucky winners. Since I like to keep my promises, it’s time to announce who those people are. In accordance with the rules that I made up, I picked the three comments at random. I thought about playing favorites, but then I realized that I don’t actually know any of you, and just went with the ones my cat pointed to on the screen. (It is possible that she may be playing favorites, as I don’t know what she does on the computer when I’m not around.)
The three winners are Ivan Gustavo Flores Molina, Billy Kent, and lizmoney. Each of you will be receiving a Smartfish Whirl Mini mouse! Congratulations to these three, and for those that didn’t win, we’ll be announcing a new contest happening over at GamerFront.net a little later in the day, so stay tuned!
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