Computer mice come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and styles, but generally, they have one characteristic in common: a flat surface on the bottom to keep the mouse stable. I mean, you want your mouse to be stable, right?
Right?
Don’t you?
NO. NO YOU DON’T. IT’S BAD, STABLE IS BAD. Or at least, a stable object that you use repetitively has the potential to maybe cause you some mild discomfort or pain. The Tru:Motion mouse from Smartfish can help alleviate repetitive stress injuries by wiggling around to better conform to your natural hand and arm position. The mouse pivots on its base (a stable base) from side to side and front to back to allow you to keep your wrist more relaxed.
I’m hoping that the mouse in the picture above is just a prototype design, ’cause a mouse like this is targeted at hardcore computer users, most of whom probably expect more than two or three buttons. Personally, I need a minimum of five to be productive.
Smartfish also makes a wiggling keyboard and a wiggling game controller, and they’re somehow working on a PDA, a laptop, a touchscreen keyboard, and power tools that incorporate the same actively ergonomic technology.We’ll see the mouse out at the beginning of August for $60, and the keyboard will follow at the end of August for $150.
USB cables are the plastic tethers that keep our mice chained to our desks, and ourselves chained to our mice. You can free yourself with the convenience of a wireless mouse, but if you’re going to cut the cable, why not cut it totally and remove the mouse from the surface all together? The WeraMouse is a little handheld device with buttons and a trackball on it. With it, you’re able to mouse around and click from any position (up to 25 feet away) using only your fingers. Not a fan of trackballs? I hear ya, and WeraMouse is also working on a version with a touchpad instead. The mice are good for over 24 hours of nonstop operation between charges, and come with a 90 minute USB charging cradle.
I’ve never used anything like this before, but I do appreciate the freedom from the restrictions of a surface that my Logitech MX Air gives me. WeraMouse says that it’s much better for your posture to use a mouse like theirs, but it seems like it’s just another opportunity to slouch.
Additional slouching opportunities via the WeraMouse will cost $99, and the touchpad version isn’t quite out yet.
Whatever you plan to do with your computer, there is usually a peripheral made just for the task. If you want to game there are a myriad of gaming mice on the market and if you just want to do boring old computer work, there are peripherals for that too.
Bella has announced a new wireless mouse called the HD Mouse that is aimed at professional and amateur video editors. The mouse is designed for multimedia users and includes software that allows the user to program mouse movements to act like gesture commands. The mouse has 1600dpi of sensitivity and a wireless range of up to 26 feet.
It’s probably pretty silly to try and stuff an optical drive (even a small optical drive) into a netbook. But, that doesn’t mean that sometimes, perhaps even frequently, it can be nice to have the option of playing a CD or a DVD. The most convenient way to do it is a slim drive about the size of a disc that operates off of USB bus power so that you only need the one cable. There are quite a few reasonably priced options out there, but this drive from FastMac manages to stuff CD-R/W, DVD±R/W DL, and a Blu-ray reader into one small USB drive for under $100. For $299, you can add a 1x Blu-ray burner, and $399 bumps that up to 4x.
Considering that an external slim USB DVD burner will probably cost you at least $60 or $70, the extra 20 bucks isn’t much at all to throw the additional option of Blu-ray into the mix.
This is exactly the desk accessory you need if you’re bored at work on a Thursday and want to waste a little bit of time pretending to pilot your own futuristic fighter jet, the FF-22 (that would be the “FRaptor,” I guess). Vrrrrmmmmm PEW PEW PEW! Why on earth this thing isn’t a wireless mouse, I’ll never know. It’s $17 in a bunch of different colors from who else but Brando.
No matter how many controls you try to stuff into a mouse, there are a finite amount of things you can easily and intuitively do with one hand. The Orbita mouse take a stab at a unique axis of control by turning the entire mouse into one big giant scroll wheel. It works just like a normal wireless optical mouse (it’s got a laser in the bottom, etc.), except to left click, you push the whole thing down, and to right click you squeeze it. To scroll, the top half of the mouse can be rotated around on ball bearings.
The key difference here is that you can scroll endlessly and smoothly, with a nice big physical wheel. Does it offer you any additional functionality over a traditional scroll wheel? Not really, but if you do a lot of audio or video editing, it could make your life more convenient. At $98.50, though, if I were you I might consider getting yourself a Space Navigator to use as a secondary input device instead.
The Orbita mouse should be available in January of next year.
Logitech has to be one of my favorite peripheral companies ever, and it’s not just because of their Space Navigator and MX Air mouse. Well, fine, it’s partially because of those things. But overall, they just make functional, reliable, sexy, and generally well thought out stuff, and just recently they shipped their billionth (with a b) mouse.
Now, when I say “well thought out,” the implication is that they thought through some things that just didn’t make it into production, and sure enough, they did:
There’s a limited amount of stuff that you’re generally able to… stuff… into a laptop, which is why you can buy laptop docks with more room to add peripherals. And generally if you’re the type to try to overperipheralize your laptop, you also have the type of laptop that’s hot enough to sterilize you, your pets, and if you’re lucky, your dirty laundry.
Brando’s laptop pad will solve some of these problems in a mediocre way, as it includes two cooling fans and three USB ports. The interesting bit is that it also includes an integrated interface for a bare 2.5″ SATA hard drive, which have a lot of storage and cost a dime a dozen nowadays. The size limit for the HD dock is only 250 gigs, but you can find drives of that size for about $50, which works out to be what, $0.20 a gig? Not bad at all.
The Brando USB Notebook Cooling Pad costs about $33.
Kids, listen closely: just because you’ve mashed the caps lock key down when typing something on the internet doesn’t mean that your comments have any more relevance, or that anyone is more likely to pay attention to you. It’s just really, really, REALLY ANNOYING.
SEE?
If you can’t help yourself, here’s a gentle suggestion: bolt a couple fourteen-gauge 10mm lebret spikes onto the caps lock key, and see how long it takes for you to cure yourself of your affliction. Not recommended for laptops.
Related Tags: Ergonomic, Mouse, Peripherals
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