The Mice That Didn't Make It

Harry writes "For every blockbuster of the mouse world (such as Microsoft and Logitech's big sellers) there have been countless mice that flopped, or never made it to market. Mice shaped like pyramids; mice shaped like Mickey; mice that doubled as numeric keypads or phones. Even one that sat on your steering wheel. I've rounded up some evocative patent drawings on twenty notable examples."

Re:Next.. Next.. Next...

[jDeepbeep]

20 pages for 20 smallish pictures? Really? The site must be desperate for ad revenue.

AdBlock Plus claims it is actively blocking four scripts when I land on the first page, all of them from static.fmpub.net

Re:He forgot one

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I assume you're talking about the hockey puck mouse [wikipedia.org], rather than the ADB Mouse II that's pictured on the top of the page. The former was a disaster, of course; the latter was actually quite a good mouse and very pleasant to use.

Re:He forgot one

[infalliable]

Yes, the most god awful mouse ever made and sold in "large" quantities. Why would you ever make a mouse that had no tactile feel to let you know which was was up, make it really light, and then put a really heavy cord on it so that the cord was always trying to make it rotate? Not to mention it was too small and just uncomfortable.

I wish this one made it...

[Geak]

I purchased a Logitech Trackman Marble FX a number of years ago for about $60. Logitech discontinued it a long time ago. Personally I think it's the best mouse I have ever used. When friends of mine use the computer though they don't like it. It does take getting used to but it's extremely comfortable. Great for first person shooters. Eventually playing Unreal Tournament killed the right mouse button. I went looking for a replacement online and found some on ebay priced at over $300. I guess I'm not the only one that thinks this mouse rocks, but I'm not about to fork over $300 for a mouse. To keep mine alive I took a button out of a $10 mouse and soldered it into the old one. Someday I hope Logitech will bring this design back in a wireless version. As a side note, I think console systems would be improved if the right analog joystick on the controller was replaced with a trackball. Aiming is next to impossible with a joystick.

Best mouse...

[nscheffey]

....is not a mouse at all. It's the RollerMouse [mcergo.com], which lets me mouse without taking my hands off the keyboard. I have used this for 10 years and continue to be amazed that its not the standard in computing.

WORST. MOUSE. EVER.

[operagost]

The pear-shaped, ridged piece of garbage that came with Packard Bells in the 1990s. I know you're surprised-- Packard-Bell made crappy hardware? But instead of durable grey rubber like most decent mice of the time, the ball on this thing was made of some porous black fake-rubber product that disintegrated in about a month on the display model. It's hard to demo a product when it just came out last month and the customers can see the mouse is already broken.

Re:Slow news day?

[Pharmboy]

The point here is the guy actually collected the images from the original patents, which took a little work (and a lot of weeding out). The concept wasn't original (and the formatting over many pages sucked) but the actual content was pretty good, and yes, interesting.