Rui CarmoIt must be early Xmas or something (actually it isn't, but that's another matter) - my wife gifted me with a Mighty Mouse (the wired kind), and so far I'm having fun.
I used to think that I'd never stop using my Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse (the rare, white variety that they don't seem to manufacture anymore), and $DIVINITY knows that I have something like thirty old mice stashed away in several boxes and closets, but truth be told that my wife hated it - it is big, bulky, heavy, and getting kind of grubby.
The Microsoft mouse it has been with me since my first 15" iMac, when I wrote the often quoted sentence -
...using Mac OS X with a single-button mouse is like rowing with a single oar.
Now, all of a sudden, there are entirely too many ways to click this thing around.
I'm loving the Ctrl+trackball zoom (in my opinion it ought to have the directions reversed, but hey, I'm not complaining much), which makes it easier to read inanely minuscule type and check pixel alignment on page designs.
The side button(s) (yes, I know it's a single button) are utterly lame, though - so hard to use that I'm thinking of enabling it/them as a trigger to sleep the machine or blank the screen.
Anyway, the Microsoft mouse was a grand ride - the hardware is sturdy, the extra weight was great for building up Quake muscles and it had a no-nonsense approach at right-clicking, but I was getting tired of the batteries going out on me in the middle of something (usually quite late at night) and making me lose my train of thought while I dug in the re-chargeable "pool" for "new" ones (which, despite my efforts at keeping a minimum of two sets of batteries ready to use, tended to be empty).
There are a few extra twists to the story, given that (as usual for Portugal) Apple hardware is harder to track down than Nemo and there wasn't a single Bluetooth Mighty Mouse anywhere (we were in and out of seven parking lots today, having covered all the major retailers in Lisbon), but in the end I wasn't that keen on doing the "Ni-MH shuffle" (even if the Bluetooth variant can run off a single battery) and decided to go for the wired version (which was only on sale on half the places we visited, by the way).
Less features, less hassle, more reliability (hopefully), no faffing around with Bluetooth when the machine boots, easier to move to another Mac, etc.
So I am now careening wildly through the screen, over-compensating as my Hulk-like wrist tries to aim this sleek, feather-light piece of technology at the window widgets and draws elaborate orbital patterns around them instead.
Fortunately, the menu bar is still easier to hit than a barn - don't you just love the Mac?