The Best Computer Mice In Every Category 246
ThinSkin writes "Now that the folks at ExtremeTech have finished writing about the best keyboards for every occasion, they conclude their roundup of input devices with the best computer mice in every category, which includes ergonomic mice, gaming mice, notebook mice, and so on. While this year's crop of gaming mice didn't impress much, there were advancements in non-gaming mice and tracking, as demonstrated by Microsoft's Explorer Mouse with BlueTrack technology — which is considered more precise than optical and laser. Even ergonomic mice saw little growth in the year — prompting the reviewer to rely on the older Zero Tension Mouse as a favorite."
I don't care what category (Score:5, Interesting)
Laptop Mouse? (Score:3, Interesting)
My best laptop mouse is the built in touchpad.
I usually sit leaned back in my office chair with my laptop on my lap and a mouse is a waste for me.
A touchpad is also more intuitive to me, the best option that gives me all the advantages of a touchscreen and a mouse.
And those ultra tiny portable mice drive me up the walls, and besides I spend most of my day writing mails and tooling through logs on the command line... no mouse needed for vi, grep or tail thanks a lot.
only if they allow delay while typing... (Score:2, Interesting)
I have a Fujitsu tablet now, which has a trackpoint/touch stick. That works fine once calibrated, and saves some space which allows for a bigger keyboard with a smaller screen.
Re:TrackPoint (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in 1999 or so I used to absolutely slay in Tribes 1 on an old ThinkPad with a TrackPoint. Oddly, I couldn't play at all with a regular mouse.
Re:Best "mouse": Logitech Trackman (Score:3, Interesting)
My major beef with all the mice presented & with the article is that NONE of the mice shown are bluetooth models.
Every laptop I have bought over the past 5 years has had Bluetooth pre-installed to be able to sync/transfer files to/from my cellphone. I will NOT condemn a USB port just to communicate with some mouse's non-standard RF when my PC already has a usable means of communicating with my mouse.
Re:Best "mouse": Logitech Trackman (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Software (Score:2, Interesting)
Bluetooth royalty (Score:3, Interesting)
I will NOT condemn a USB port just to communicate with some mouse's non-standard RF when my PC already has a usable means of communicating with my mouse.
Then get a hub. As I understand it, Bluetooth mice cost more because Bluetooth is patented with a nonzero royalty.
Lefty or symmetrical mice (Score:3, Interesting)
This problem is often exacerbated by games like Fallout 3, in which bethesda felt the need to perma-bind numpad 7 (strafe left for us southpaws) to the 'Stop the game and open windows live' command. Is there no money in making a mirror version for those of us with a recessive gene or two?
Why no wired/wireless combo? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:data backups (Score:3, Interesting)
The expense is not particularly in the capital outlay, but in the logistics of ensuring that you always have fuel laid in, and that your system is always ready to go at a suitably short notice.
At work, we have to have a separate emergency power system, housed in the opposite corner of the vessel to the main engines, on a separate fuel system, and hooked up to the distribution boards to re-power the vessel's communications, accommodation lighting, control room and certain critical subsystems (principally, the derrick's electrical braking system, and the fuel pump to the cement unit, the hydraulics for the anchoring and/ or DP system), but most importantly it also powers the back-up fire pump. (This is, naturally, housed distant to the main fire pump ; what would you do if you had a fire in the engineering space that housed the main fire pump? Die?) All of which adds considerably to the overall complexity of the system. We normally do a test run of the emergency generator system along with personnel muster drill, abandon vessel drills etc about once a week ; these system are utterly useless if their use is not routinely drilled until every person using the system knows that the system works, and what their roles in the system are.
Oh, am I making it sound a bit more complex than you'd wanted? well, that's the difference between playing at having a backup system and really having a backup system.
(Minor sideline : Like everyone else, I'm not best pleased when the alarms go for emergency drills in the middle of my sleep period. But I accept it as necessary, and routinely object to the scheduling of drills at fixed times in the calendar ; I think that they should be at random times, or at routine times plus as many random times. This makes me unpopular. So what?)
Your generator needs a fuel supply always laid-in sufficient for your anticipated outage ; you need to know where you're going to get additional fuel, and how long that is going to take ; you need to know how you're going to transfer fuel from your bowser [wikipedia.org] (transfer container) to the generator's fuel system without the generator running (and hence, no electrical power ; or, do you select generator hardware which can be re-fuelled while running? P.P.P.P.P.P! [Loath though I am to cite the Torygraph, they come to the top of the list [telegraph.co.uk]).
What to do about the exhaust fumes is left as an exercise for the student. Will you have power available for a ventilation blower? And have you double-checked on the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning? Static engines are very different beasts to the mobile engines that you're more likely to be familiar with.
Your wood-burning stove raises fewer issues. But elsewhere on today's Slashdot is a thread about someone who was off-power for 4 days [slashdot.org], so do you have stacking space for (say) a week of wood? Fire-starting equipment? Really, fire-starting equipment that you can use in the dark. Oh, you forgot to put the candles in the same drawer as the matches? And the matches are wet. Aren't you glad that you practiced this in early autumn?
People have got lost navigating back from the woodshed to the main house. It may sound surprising, but it does happen.