Mighty Mouse Review

Wednesday, Apr. 18 2007 | Author: Griffith

Ever since Apple released the Mighty Mouse, claiming it was one of the mice ever, the response has been controversial, to say the least. Some people love it, some people detest it, some grow to love it, and some grow to hate it. And there are valid reasons that can be given for any of those feelings. Myself? I think I’m one of the “third” people, the more I use the mouse the more I like it.

The mouse I purchased was the wired one, because I wanted to use it both on Mac and Windows platforms, although the drivers of the later are not really “complete”, and I’ll explain why. When you plug the mouse in a Windows XP machine, it installs itself using a standard driver, which should be common to all versions of the Operative System. With the exception of the horizontal scrolling, everything else works.

It is in Mac OS X however, that this mouse really shines. When you click the “squeeze buttons” or middle click the mouse you will activate one of the OS’s many features, like the gadgets panel, or something else, and you can configure it any way you want in the control panel for Mice and Keyboards.

Besides the lack of horizontal scrolling in Windows (vertical scrolling works just fine), there are some other characteristics which might displease some users. This mouse works with sensors, similar to the ones found in the iPod’s click wheel. They detect when your finger is touching an area of the mouse, and when you press the mouse down for the “click”, it activate the button of the side that you’re pressing.

The problem with this new method, is that if you happen to have your finger resting on the area of the “left button” and click the right side, the mouse will think that you did a click with both the buttons at the same time. This also means that you can’t hold one mouse button down, and then click another, and in some games, like strategy ones, this might upset the gameplay a bit.

Those are the two main reasons why some people might dislike this mouse. There is also a problem being reported, that the scrolling wheel sometimes stops working. But since there are various guides on how to clean the mouse available on the web, I won’t really count that as a flaw.

Despite these flaws, all the mouse really needs is a bit of getting used to. At first, the difference between it and my other computer mouses made it a bit difficult to use it. But after using it for a couple of weeks I hardly notice any different at all between it and my old one. What I do notice is that I don’t need any batteries, and the cord stays wrapped nicely thanks to the little plastic that comes with it (like the iPod’s data cable).

Due to the small flaws, it’s impossible for me to give a very high grade to this mouse, but still, it’s much better, in many aspects, to other computer mouses I’ve used in terms of size, precision, and comfortability.

Therefore, I give the wired Mighty Mouse a 4 out of 5.