Something useful from Microsoft?!

Ok, I should not flame... Perhaps they had a couple other useful toughts in the past as well and maybe we are just pissed off because they had tose ideas first and now they over-capitalize on them.

Anyway, one annoying thing I always found in the mouse (perhaps the only real annoyance of what i think is very close to the perfect human interface device since it was invented) is that while you are typing on the keyboard, having to move your hand and grab the mouse kinda breaks the rithm... ok, I know, I am building a case out of nothing but I am one of those who type looking at the keyboard rather than the screen so, I have to move the hand, look for the mouse, rise the eyes from the keyboard, look for the pointer... it's a lot of little steps so any solution which removes one is more than welcome.



Uncle Bill just adressed step one and two: "moving your hand away" and "looking for the mouse". The idea illustrated below basically involves a "mouse" which is always strapped to the hand and does not interfere with regular typing, but when the fist is closed some accelerometers are engaged actually turning on the pointing device.

It sounds nice, the only thing that does not convince me is the position of the "left and right mouse buttons" which are the 114and 116 in the diagram and although they are meant to be engaged by the thumb are very close and very ill placed, just try to touch your index finger knuckle with your tumb to get an idea, and then think of doing it n times per day with enough precision to hit two different buttons (or three buttons, i do not understand what 120 is, the scroll perhaps?).

Anyway, I do believe that accelerometers will soon or later show up in day to day pointing devices and it will be for good, but I do not believe that the good old mouse will be sent to retirement too soon.