Smooth and sleek! (Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer)

Member Name: benlovell

Product:	Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
Date:	04/06/01 (28 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cool looking, Responsive, Comfortable

Disadvantages: Only for right handers

Hello!

I have been using the Intellimouse Explorer now for around a year and its completely faultless. If you spend a lot of time on the internet you will really appreciate the ease at which you can surf using this mouse.

First of all the mouse looks really great. Its a very futuristic looking piece of kit and the first thing you notice when you look at it is the little red glow eminating underneath, the reason being that this mouse isn't like a normal mouse - it has no balls! Thats right, its completely optical. Light is bounced from the surface the mouse is on and then calculated as movement on your monitor. The mouse has a very ergonomic slanted shape, which fills your hand, but since it slopes off to the right it can only be used by right-handers! The side panels have a rubbery feel which keeps the mouse grippy even if your hands get a little clammy! Overall I would say this is the most comfortable mouse I have ever used.

There are four seperate buttons on this mouse, but including the scrollwheel operating as a button there is five. For anybody who hasn't ever used a scrolling mouse you don't know what your missing! Rather than having to aim for the scroll bar everytime you want to navigate a page you can simply roll the wheel and get there in half the time! Obviously this isn't just limited to Internet Explorer - oh no - you can use it in Quake for instance to change weapons ultra fast and dodge that frag. In general use you will definately notice the time you save having a scroll wheel.

The buttons are the usual left and right mouse buttons plus the back and forward buttons (or whatever you set them to be). Out of the box the mouse will be configured to use these buttons as the back and forward functions in your browser. With a little tweaking in the supplied Intellipoint software you can set these buttons to a million different functions such as cut and paste, start menu and show desktop. This is another re
al timesaver and one that you can't ever go without once you've tried it!

The mouse can either be plugged into the USB port which all up to date computers should have and if your not equipped with one then you can plug it into the PS2 port with the supplied adaptor. If you can use the USB port I would definately recommend it over the PS2 port since it is much, much more responsive.

Overall I would recommend this mouse to anyone, its so good I couldn't live without it so I bought myself one for work too!

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