"BlueTrack" Mouse More Advanced Than Laser, Optical 191
ThinSkin writes "Just when you thought laser and optical mice were enjoying their reign on mousepads worldwide, Microsoft has to come along and introduces their 'BlueTrack Technology,' a mouse tracking system that aims to work on virtually any terrain short of mirrored and reflective surfaces. ExtremeTech reviews the Explorer Mouse and Explorer Mini Mouse, both of which are powered by Microsoft's newest sensor, to see just how well this technology works. Testing on granite, carpet, marble, and other surfaces, the reviewers were impressed with the responsiveness of BlueTrack, but they also noted that laser mice were competitive on these surfaces as well. Even though the mice didn't get a recommendation from the reviewers (price being a major concern), they did admit that this BlueTrack is the best tracking system available today. MaximumPC has some pictures and a brief technical interview."
Re:Yeah (Score:3, Informative)
Battery: 3 weeks !!! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:All the buttons in the world (Score:3, Informative)
The MX Revolution is a piece of junk. I absolutely hate it. I have my desktop wired up to my HDTV and use the MX revolution along with the diNovo Edge keyboard. The keyboard, which is bluetooth, works amazingly well. No signal loss, no lag between typing and text appearing on the screen. Even the touchpad works reasonably well, however it has some difficulties determining double clicks but it's not my main mouse so who cares?
The Revolution, on the other hand, has been nothing but headaches. Mind you, it's not bluetooth. At first I thought I was too far from the PC. Now I sit about 8 feet away at most from the receiver. The mouse constantly stops moving, the system consistently registers single clicks as double clicks, and the driver install is all screwed up on my machine. The mouse has been such a huge waste of money.
Why can't someone make a decent bluetooth mouse?
Re:All the buttons in the world (Score:2, Informative)
I've got one of these for my HTPC, stows well with the keyboard in a coffee table drawer for when the computer is not what's on screen. It works very well. I sit about 10' from my TV (under which the dongle sits) and it's fairly infrequent that I get missed connection with it. Though I did have it behind the TV for a while and it was extremely spotty then, so YMMV.
Also, they're not cheap, wait for them to go on sale online or at Fry's. Got mine for $60 for the mouse/kbd combo...two years ago.
Just what we need...Nightlight. (Score:4, Informative)
Oh I don't know. I haven't needed a nightlight since I got into consumer electronics.
Re:Anyone actually read the review? (Score:2, Informative)
the only advantage i can see is that it works on more surfaces than laser mice can. but so do conventional optical mice, which can already go up to 1600 dpi.
Actually TFA says that optical was worse than laser on the tricky surfaces:
A very high-end Razer Boomslang CE optical mouse had trouble maintaining a smooth cursor. An Ideazon Reaper Edge laser mouse faired pretty well, but not perfectly. This just goes to show that laser mice and the Explorer are able to handle difficult surfaces more cleanly than optical mice.