Hands on
While Apple’s Magic Mouse lets you do a few
multi-touch gestures, I've never liked how it felt in my hand, and I hate how
it scrolls—I’d much rather have a real scroll wheel for navigating the long
pages of text I read day in and day out. When I plugged in Kensington’s Pro Fit
Mid-Size Mouse, it felt so much more comfortable and responsive that my Magic
Mouse immediately went in a drawer and might never come out.
Pretty
colors and great performance.
Lefties need not apply here the ergonomic
design is shaped to be held in your right hand, but its curves and button
placement make it feel great under your fingers and palm. The scroll wheel
gives me just enough tactical feedback without any extra noise. (A couple of
years ago I used a Microsoft mouse with such a loud scroll wheel rattle that my
coworkers made fun of me.)
It has a few extra buttons: two under where
your thumb goes, and one below the scroll wheel. The lower under-thumb button
opens the Application Switcher (the thing that pops up when you press
Command-Tab), but the other two did nothing. System Preferences > Mouse let
me set the tracking, scrolling, and double-click speeds, but it wouldn’t let me
reprogram those extra buttons.
And when I opened System Preferences >
Mission Control, I was able to choose a new function for Mouse Button 3 (the
upper of the two under-thumb buttons). But I couldn't reassign Mouse Button 4
to do anything besides open the Application Switcher, and Mouse Button 5 (under
the scroll wheel) wouldn't do anything. It'd be cool if Kensington supplied a
driver to fix that, but for $25, just having a comfortable, responsive mouse
will suffice.
The bottom line. Size-wise it hits the
sweet spot between too small notebook mouse and big-Honkin’ desktop versions.
The tiny Nano USB receiver snaps into the bottom of the mouse for travel. And
it feels great in my hand.
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Information
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Website: www.kensinqton.com
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Price: $24.99
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Requirements: USB port, right hand
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(+) Really
small receiver. Comfortable. Nice colors. Great battery life. Inexpensive.
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(-) Mot for
lefties. Can’t reprogram all the buttons.
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