Mouse Tales from The Perfect Computer!

The Prefect Computer
Source Unknown.

Do you think we'll ever run out of warm things to write about our trusted, dependable computer mouse? The computer mouse was invented over 40 years ago and has been re-invented ever since. It's still being re-engineered, re-designed and re-discovered. What's your favorite mouse tale?

This Logitech Wireless Mouse sits in its own saddle charger.

The Computer Mouse

from Wikipedia

In computing, a mouse (plural mouses, mice, or mouse devices) is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons. It sometimes features other elements, such as "wheels", which allow the user to perform various system-dependent operations, or extra buttons or features can add more control or dimensional input. The mouse's motion typically translates into the motion of a pointer on a display, which allows for fine control of a Graphical User Interface. The name mouse, originated at the Stanford Research Institute, derives from the resemblance of early models (which had a cord attached to the rear part of the device, suggesting the idea of a tail) to the common mouse.

The first marketed integrated mouse – shipped as a part of a computer and intended for personal computer navigation – came with the Xerox 8010 Star Information System in 1981. However, the mouse remained relatively obscure until the appearance of the Apple Macintosh; in 1984 a prominent PC columnist commented the release of this new computer with a mouse: “There is no evidence that people want to use these things.”

A mouse now comes with most computers and many other varieties can be bought separately.

Hama Laser M1080 Computer Mouse
from Computer Mouse.org.uk

The Hama Laser M1080 Computer Mouse makes for an ideal data input device that provides you with maximum luxury and comfort in terms of usage. It is easy to hold and handle. The ergonomic design ensures, whether you are a right handed or left handed user, you get maximum comfort without any feel of discomfort or stress on the hand and fingers.

With so many brands of computer mouse available in the market, the competition has become tough for the manufacturers to maintain their stand in the market. This mouse uses laser technology to detect movement with a resolution of 2000 dpi. It provides you incredible precision and accuracy in movement detection. It supports USB interface to enable connections with other devices.

The smart and cute Hama Laser M1080 Wired Computer Mouse consists of 5 buttons and a scroll wheel. The side thumb buttons provide for easy web surfing while the scroll wheel ensures pleasant and easy navigation. It is black in colour and will easily suit any brand of computer you are using. It functions on wired technology.

The OS supported by this wired computer mouse include Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows Vista and XP.

This HandshoeMouse grips the hand.

Bio-Design Computer Mouse
PRNewswire

The computer mouse has now been around for 40 years and has become a tool that many people work with for hours each day. The ergonomically-designed 'HandshoeMouse' is an especially comfortable and healthy version. Its innovative design has been developed by two Dutch universities and prevents the user suffering from a 'mouse arm'. It comes in three sizes and a slick wireless version is also available.

When the mouse was first created for NASA back in 1968, nobody could have imagined that, in the future, everyday office life would be unthinkable without it. But it is now also evident that long hours of working with the input device do have a downside. Increasingly, users are complaining of stresses and strains in the shoulder and pains in the forearm used to control the mouse. The ergonomic design of the HandshoeMouse offers both relief and prevention. It has been developed on the basis of studies undertaken at university medical schools in Rotterdam and Maastricht.

The hand lies on the mouse

Due to its curvature, the bio-design of the HandshoeMouse supports the natural shape of the relaxed palm of the hand. In addition, the mouse offers a supporting surface for the whole hand including the heel of the hand, so that the mouse need not be continually controlled with the fingers. The hand muscles are noticeably less stressed after long periods at the computer - thereby preventing complaints. After only a short-period of familiarisation, the HandshoeMouse can be comfortably and accurately controlled. And since not every hand is the same size, the HandshoeMouse comes in three sizes - small, medium and large.

Wireless: No need to change batteries and no need for a charger

A cordless variant of the HandshoeMouse is now also available. This wireless version offers unlimited mobility and practical charging technology: if the battery is empty, charging can be carried out by simply plugging in the USB cable provided with the mouse. The mouse can then continue to be used without further interruption - a very clever idea.

The HandshoeMouse needs no driver software and is compatible with both Microsoft Windows and Apple-Mac systems.

This Warm Ergonomic Optic Computer Mouse Heats using infrared heating element. Keeps your mouse hand healthy and warm!

Ergonomic Mouse, Touchpad Keyboards and Smart Cat Touchpads All Make for Endless Choices
by Melissa Peterman

It's the New Year! It is time for a new job, new computer and or perhaps a new computer mouse. With the computer mouse at a ripe age of 40 years old, there have definitely been some modifications and improvements.

As technology changes computers, it also changes the way we access them. The computer mouse, invented in 1964, allowed more people to connect with computers than ever before. Less keys and codes were needed to get to a point faster on the computer screen and time spent completing tasks were cut in half. Ergonomic computer mice were created to ease strains on wrists, backs and arms; the fingermouse was invented for the same reasons, and decrease the space necessary for the same computer mouse funtions.

Other advances in computer mouse technology was the touch pad mouse called a trackpad, or a Smart Cat, allowing a user to have a touch pad mouse as part of their computer and often give more control to the user. LED and laser mice also became standard, removing the cord that connected the mouse to the computer, and instead used a remote control sensor to connect signals to the computer screen.

A lot has changed since computer scientists used to be the only people able to connect with computers. If computer scientists only knew what was to come? If you could suddenly touch the screen and move objects with your hands? Now, even that idea has become a reality. Soon, touch screen panels will be a common, household item. What can a touch screen panel do that your previous computer monitor can not? Instead of using your computer mouse to move objects on a screen, you can now touch them with your hands or fingertips. You can shuffle your plans on a virtual calendar on your home touch screen panel.

You can create a new landscaping design of your back yard by moving trees and shrubs virtually around a photo of your yard. Because you are allowed to pick things up exactly where you want and move them exactly, you are saving even more time than using a computer mouse, a touchpad mouse or keyboard touchpad. How will this new technology affect computer mouse sales in the future?

The future of the computer mouse may be dim, but we are a long way off. Think about it- we have used the classic computer mouse for 40 years! Millions of people are using the classic computer mouse and will no doubt be using it for several years to come. Even if you are thinking of buying a classic computer mouse in the New Year, think of it like so many other computer mouse users- 'if the shoe fits- wear it! Or in this case, if the computer mouse fits your life- use it!


About the author: Melissa Peterman is a web content specialist for Innuity. For more information about getting an ergonomic mouse or the Smart Cat go to Cirque.

Photo Courtesy of PC World

Resisting the Touchscreen Blight
by Charles Moore

Last weekend, New York Times’ Virginia Heffernanhit a resonant chord with me in a wonderfully crafted piece eloquently relating why she hated the iPhone experience so much she returned her iPhone to AT&T, replacing it with a BlackBerry.

The nexus of Ms. Heffernan’s iPhone discontent was mainly an issue that I can identify with — her dislike of the Apple device’s touchscreen virtual keyboard. I also detest touchscreens, and even as someone who makes his living partly from writing about Apple products, when I get a smartphone (something I’ve successfully resisted so far due to the fact that the nearest 3G or GSM wireless coverage ends some 35 miles short of where I live) I would likely opt for a BlackBerry myself because it has a real analog keyboard.

There’s something that just rubs me (pun intended) the wrong way at a very elemental level about touching display screens. I’m extremely picky about keeping my computer and iPod displays, TV screens, digital camera preview LCDs, etc. clean and free of smears and smudges, and I recoil reflexively from touching them, so touchscreens are massively counterintuitive for me to almost the degree of a phobia. But it goes deeper than that. I had a pocket calculator and organizer for a while that required data and control entry via a screen stylus, and while technically that didn’t involve actually touching the display with my fingers, I still didn’t like it as an input method.

I’m a mechanically-oriented guy, and I’m most comfortable working with input keys that visibly depress when you push on them, and whose movement registers spatially and visually. Touch screens offer no typing feedback, as typo-strewn messages from my iPhone-user friends highlight.

As Virginia Heffernan notes, with her iPhone “To answer the phone, I had to touch the screen. Years of not touching screens – so as not to smudge or scar – made me wary. But I brushed the ‘answer call’ and up came fragments of my mother’s cheerful voice….I hunted for a keypad to call her back, but it was gone…”

Then there was something about the iPhone touchscreen “keyboard” that seemed to induce ineptness. “My right index finger – the only digit precise enough to hit the close-set virtual iPhone keys – seemed an anemic, cerebral thing, designed for making paltry points in debating club. I repeatedly stabbed to the right of my target letter. It was like being 4 again – or being 90. I couldn’t see, it seemed; I couldn’t point; I couldn’t connect.”

I find myself klutzy and error prone with touchscreen input, too.

I’m also of the same school of thought as Ms. Heffernan on what she calls the iPhone’s “know-it-all suggestions.” She observes that “the iPhone seemed to want to be more human, more helpful, jollier than I was! The vaunted Apple user-friendliness was exposed, before my eyes, as bossiness and insincerity,” in a word, “smug.” That assertive busybody dynamic is one of the characteristics I really detest about most Microsoft software, and unfortunately increasingly creeping into Apple’s software applications and even hardware (eg: the ambient light sensitive screen brightness setting on my new MacBook) as well. I like to think for myself.

What worries me most is that some rumor speculation suggests that Apple’s answer to the PC netbook market share challenge could come in the form of an oversized iPod touch rather than an Apple riff on the conventional mini-laptop form factor with a real keyboard and a screen that you keep your grubby paws off of. Personally, I have less than zero interest in even an ultra-portable computer with a touchscreen keyboard, although a tablet that allowed for stylus based handwriting recognition and command input might have some utility — so long as the option remained to hook up a keyboard and mouse when practical.

I’ll be keenly interested to see what materializes, but if it does turn out to be a touchscreen netbook, I’m apprehensive that the touchscreen blight could spread into Apple’s regular notebook space, as the non-swappable battery metastasized from the MacBook Air to the 17? unibody MacBook Pro.

Don’t go there, Apple — please!

Write With Right, Mouse With Left
by podblack

When I present anything using Powerpoint, I have to stop for about five seconds before I start - so I remember which hand I’m using and which buttons to press to progress through the slides.

In 2006, I discovered what can happen if you overuse a computer. The numbness in my right hand began to turn into spikes through my forearm, until I couldn’t move my right shoulder forward. The palm of my hand felt as if it had a large stone wedged in it. My index and middle finger began to twinge and cramp, even if I picked up a bag or a book.

At the time, I was completing one Masters of Education degree, preparing for the thesis proposal for another and working full-time as a teacher. By the time I started a post-grad in Psychology by distance education - I could no longer sleep on my right-hand side.

You ignore these things. You have deadlines. There’s work to get finished. You move to using a backpack and shift the weight to the left; you learn to take the weight off your arm when dancing in hold position and when all the advice of muscle relaxants and warm baths don’t stop the insomnia, you begrudgingly seek help. During a lunch-break, after you made sure that the final two classes of the day revolved around either a reading session or self-directed work. Teachers are the worst at taking care of themselves.

The compromise I decided to make (beyond the usual office paraphernalia to lessen the stress on my body) - was to take some of the computer-generated pain off my right hand and move the mouse to the left-hand side of the desk… and learn to become a left-handed ‘mouser’.

I couldn’t stop working. There’s no way I was going to do my job without a computer (mind, how did I manage for over four years, when producing worksheets meant only cutting and pasting with the photocopier?). There was also no way I could escape the blame for what I did to myself. Ergonomic equipment, the health and safety officers and all those little email reminders about taking a break - they’re not meant to be ignored. Duh.

These days, I go to pilates class and talk to the physiotherapists about how computer use has contributed to the ill-health of about 70% of their clients. I go to the supply office and see what there is that can help prop up books, distance myself from the screen and allow me to handle hours of work without repetitive injury. I taught myself to be persistent in changing the way I used my hands and now I can fairly regularly click mouse buttons correctly if I’m using right-hand controls - but hold it in my left hand. Better than buggering up all the settings for everyone else who shares the office.

People now assume I’m ambidextrous and I’ve had some fun working on writing with my left hand as well. I’ve also discovered that the spongy wrist-supporting ergonomic mouse-mat is quite useful for smacking my forehead into and howling my rage silently when things crash.

An additional intrigue is the world of the left-hander. The difficulty of finding a lefty-computer mouse or settling for a dual-handed one. The persistance of ’sinister’ jokes. Moving my chair about so I don’t bump into people with my elbow. Watching people blanch at my ability to take notes with the right hand as I dash through a Word document with the left. Let alone the design elements of some desks and spaces that don’t consider a left-hander - I’ve even discovered the joy of left-handed coffee mugs!

Injury is probably not one of the things that immediately spring to mind for many when it comes to a ‘most firey fire through which you have had to walk in your scientific career’ but it certainly did contribute to the difficulty of getting things done. I’m certain that there’s other people who have learned over time to think first and foremost of their health as being a crucial factor, in terms of challenges. Let alone the nasty habit of defaulting to ‘menu’ when I click the wrong button during Powerpoint, rather than progressing through a speech.