Why didn’t I buy this sooner? I thought having extra buttons on a mouse implied laziness, but I realize how productive it actually is.
What I like about the mouse:
-Ergonomic shape. Your hand fits nicely around the mouse, and your thumb rests comfortably while still on the mouse.
-Fly wheel – This feature lets you scroll more quickly. The scrolling wheel on the top of the mouse works like any other scrolling wheel, ratcheting a few clicks at a time. However, if you’re looking to scroll through several pages, you can simply flick the wheel with a little force and instead of ratcheting it will spin continuously. When you get to where you want to on the document, you can simply use your finger to stop scrolling wheel. It’s such a simple feature, but I’ve found I use it all the time.
-Side-scroll (wheel next to thumb) – This was the main feature I was looking for in a new mouse. I deal with a lot of spreadsheets, and it is much easier now to scroll sideways rather than moving the mouse to the bottom right corner of the document and manually clicking sideways.
-Forward/Back buttons (just behind side-scroll) – There are two buttons that allow you to go forward or back. I find the ‘back’ button more useful. For instance, if on a webpage, you can click the ‘back’ button to go to the previous page (rather than clicking on the actual icon on the webpage). It’s also useful when drilling down file folders in Windows – if you click on the wrong folder, simply use your thumb to go back.
-Directional buttons – Where your thumbs rests is its own button. In addition, you can press down the button and then move the mouse forward, back, left, or right to give you another four buttons.
I paid full price at Best Buy ($60). Originally, I wanted to max out at $40. Having had the mouse, it seems like it would be worth spending $80. Yeah, it can be a chunk of money up front, but the increase in productivity is worth the price.
Some other observations:
Battery life: I first used the mouse out of the box and did not charge it. I got about a week of everyday use (6 days of work, 10-11 hours a day). I’ve recharged once and have been using it for two weeks. The battery life shows 2 out of 3 bars.
Customizable buttons: The mouse has preset functions already loaded from which you can choose, or you can pick what you want each button to do. Just for example, options include: volume control, play/pause, cut, paste, forward, back, bring up calculator, navigate windows, zoom/rotate, etc.
Cons (and these are pretty small cons, but I mention them because I’ve noticed them)
1) I wish the side-scroll wheel and the forward/back buttons were moved a little bit closer toward the front of the mouse. Because of location, I actually reversed the forward/back buttons.
2) Scrolling: when scrolling, there is a slight gliding effect at the end. So the page will slightly keep moving even when you’re ready to click on something. There isn’t a hard ‘stop’ when scrolling. Overall, it isn’t a huge deal, but if I could make the mouse perfect, I would have the glide effect removed.