No Bull, Just Mouse (Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical)

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical
Date:	03/05/02 (173 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: see review

Disadvantages: wheel is a bit jerky

Like I said, no bull, so lets skip the intro...

System Requirements

Before I go on, you'd be best to read these - no point reading the rest if you can't even use it!

· Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP or Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 with service pack 5.0 or later

· 25MB of free hard disk space

· Spare PS/2 or USB port(USB is Win 95/98/2000/ME/XP only)

· Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 with Service Pack 2 or later

· CDROM drive for installation CD

Features and Design

At a glance:

· Two buttons and a central roller, both fully programmable

· Optical movement sensor

· Cord attachment through USB or through included PS2 adapter.

· Beige top, grey/black central roller, sides and base

· Glowing red ?eye? on base and again at the back(for reasons unknown - probably aesthetics)

More In-depth:

The none too excitingly titled 'Wheel Mouse Optical' is one of the current trend of what I call 'eunuch mice' (i.e. those with no balls) from Microsoft. For the complete layman, that means the mouse no longer uses the old 'ball and roller'? technology which mean you would periodically have to clean the internal rollers to continue smooth usage of your mouse, but instead uses a beam of light to pick out the imperfection in the surface upon which is lies and thus detect movement.

Document interaction is achieved through three programmable interfaces - the left and right buttons and central roller which can be both clicked and scrolled. Both buttons are large and positioned at the top edge of the mouse with the roller splitting the two. In other words there are no surprises to be had here, its a very typical mouse design although personally I think the charcoal/beige combination looks rather more stylish than some of the less aesthetically pleasing mice out there.

I suppose

I should also say that this is a corded mouse as opposed to the even more modern trend to feature mice without a cord and that the cord is around 2 meters in length so should be long enough for even the largest of desktops. I mention this only because I bought a mouse once which came with an unbelievably short cord which made it unusable for me at the time, so not as much of an irrelevant/overkill comment as it might look!

Comfort

A mouse is a mouse is a mouse...until you come across one which is damn uncomfortable and end up changing it very quickly. Comfort is a matter of personal taste and personally I find this mouse to be very comfortable indeed. Having moved from a cheap old IBM mouse which came with my PC 3 years ago and being forced to use the enormous, turtle-like MS-Intellimouse Explorer duds at uni I might just be easily pleased though. It is designed to be usable by both left and right handed people alike, a simple reprogramming of the buttons achieving the desired effects on that score - so no problem no matter what your dextral(?) orientation.

Installation and Configuration

Smooth...

Installing this mouse is a doddle. As said before, you have the option of attaching the mouse through a spare USB port, or through a PS2 port - the process of installation being different for each. USB, you just shove it in and away you go - PS2 installation requires numerous time consuming and annoying reboots...which I hate. I swear Microsoft is over-zealous in this department when it comes to installing new things from them an before the install was complete I had been requested to reboot 3 times in this case. Grrr.

Mouse installed however, you can then get to the task of configuring your buttons, scroll speeds etc. to suit your own specific needs and requirements. Just about everything you can think of configuring your mouse to do is offered here, so again, faultless. Inserting the CD-ROM into your drive wi
ll give you an 8 step walkthrough of your mouse features, which is very useful for the beginner, but unless you really need to be told that the buttons go click and the wheel goes round and round you might like to give it a very quick skim through...

Pass this however and you get to configure your mouse through a very easy to use customise interface. Here, not only you can you set up you buttons to behave in a variety of different ways, set the scroll speed, mouse trails and all that stuff, but also configure your buttons to work differently dependant upon the program you are working within. This kind of flexibility is excellent.

Performance

I have no quibbles at all here. The mouse moves across surfaces far smoother than the old ball mouse I had and is much more responsive as well. It works on a variety of surfaces as well, so no need for that crumby old mousemat you?ve had cluttering up your desk anymore although there is warning that the mouse will not work so well on either reflective surfaces, those with no grain(i.e. things like glass) and those with a tight, repetitive, pattern...whatever that means. I?ve tested mine on a variety of different surfaces(well, you have to play with a new toy don?t you!) including my desktop, mousemat, shiny magazine covers, duvet...pretty much everything in site and didn?t notice any downgrade in performance. I have to say that this was my main worry and the mouse passed with flying colours.

In terms of other performance issues, both buttons strike the right balance between not being over-sensitive to the touch and not requiring Herculean strength to achieve depression which is something a few other mice could learn from, particularly the former annoyance! The teeth on the wheel however, feel quite far apart and jerky when you use it which would be my only quibble about this mouse. I prefer a much smoother scroll whilst this one is rather rough, to the point where it actually causes an audi
ble r
attle in the plastic body of the mouse when you use it, particularly when scrolling upwards.

Satisfaction

Overall, I have relatively few quibbles about this mouse at all, certainly none which would result in anything less than a 5 star rating, as it suits my modest needs perfectly. I use a mouse for surfing the net, word-processing and the occasional game both on and off-line and as such, anything more than two buttons and a scroll wheel is something of a waste. I?m sure there are those out there who love mice like the Intellimouse Explorer with its multiple programmable buttons, but that?s simply not for me. Frankly I find an abundance of buttons more of an annoyance but each to their own eh? For around £17 + P&P from Amazon(compared to £25 in PC World) I'd say it was a rather good buy all round, defintely worth looking into if you are in the market for a new mouse with medium level functionality.


**6 Months Later Performance Update**

Well, if you're in the market for hardware you'll want to know how well it performs over time as well as how well it performs 3 days out of the package dontcha? No point knowing it's great now and dead within a month...so...

Well, it has been around 6 months since I bought the mouse and yes, some niggles have started to set in. Umm, I should say I'm not the most conscientious mouse owner and it has been dropped, sat on, spilt on and generally abused for 6 months but anyway...there are some niggles setting in as I said! One niggle anyway. The optical performance is still perfect, the buttons still sensitive, scroller still working perfectly(still juddery of course :oP) but for some reason, it goes haywire now occassionally! During scrolling it (sometimes!) goes ape and drags the screen up and down violently until you slap it around a bit and it stops! Umm, this isn't a regular occurence and it's not software or program specific either just a littl
e fault which seems to have crept in and which shows itself at most once a day. Everything else still works fine, so I'd still recommend this mouse as a good purchase...umm, especially for less abusive owners!

Summary: