The saga continues…
As some of you may know, I have an extreme dislike of wires, cables and other long stringy objects. And so, I have embarked upon a quest for the perfect cordless mouse.
Microsoft Wireless Intellimouse Explorer
Street Value: $ 69.99
Well, I really thought this was going to be “The One”.I can safely say that Microsoft has been the most reliable hardware vendor I have tested to date. They have never ever failed to disappoint me.
They’ve got the visuals and ergonomics down pat. This mouse looks and feels great! It fits my paw perfectly. The left and right mouse buttons are right where they should be. There is ample room for my middle finger to run the wheel while my third and index fingers control the right and left buttons without slipping off or crunching together. The thumb buttons ride above the normal resting place for your thumb which is a tad awkward for gaming, but I’m sure I could get used to it.
It’s when you actually try and use the mouse that we run into the typical MS shortcomings. Now Microsoft never details what the DPI resolution of the mouse is, however they do say that operates at 6000 frames/sec or 37 inches/second. This is, in fact, about 4 times the fps of any optical mouse I could find. Just as the ads claim. Here is the oddity: Typically a mouse with higher resolution usually requires me to turn my Windows and game sensitivity settings down. With the Cordless Intellimouse, I actually had to increase my sensitivity settings about 3 times as high to get the normal amount of screen travel. Irregardless, the mouse functioned tolerably in Windows, slightly jittery but not to the point a normal user would notice.
In a gaming situation is where the mouse fails miserably. I tested the mouse in Half-Life and Unreal Tournament and in both games the results were the same. The tracking of elevation, like any Microsoft optical was quite good, however, in performing a 180 degree turn, the mouse would at best jitter badly but more often seem to freeze about 3 times during the turn.
I brought the mouse over to Tweety’s for a test run on his 1.3 gig Athlon. It did not seem to freeze as badly but the jitter was still noticeable. In testing the corded version of the same mouse, this never occurred.
Individual results may vary depending on your playing style. In Half-Life, my physical travel on the mouse pad is about 3.5 to 4 inches to do a 180 degree turn. This is much less sensitive than the average player. My Logitech mouse sensitivity in HL is 2 where players like Miss style’s Logitech is running 20. For the Wireless Intellimouse, I had to bump up to 5.5 to get the same travel. So she would have to set to about 55 to get the same feel. At the small amount of physical travel she requires to make a turn, she might never notice the problem.
PROS
- NO Cord !
- Great feel.
- Good button placement.
- Scroll wheel supports acceleration.
- Five, Count ‘em, FIVE buttons !
CONS
- May be jittery to UNUSABLE in a gaming scenario.
- Will NOT function on a PS2 port. USB only.
- Only 2 radio channels between mouse and receiver.
- Molded to fit only the right hand.