Canon crossbreeds mouse with adder Canon has been busy genetically splicing technology and has released a computer mouse that doubles up as a calculator. Behold the X Mark I Mouse. Canon X Mark I Mouse While the Bluetooth 2.0 device includes three mouse buttons and laser tracking, this one can also be used for calculations - as well as providing a numeric …
I put very little pressure on the mouse when moving it about, so clicky (TM) buttons should be more than adequate. (and presumably Canon have a similar concept. Unlikely to have made it to the sales stage if is basically doesn't work)
I like the idea. It's a pain having to run up a calculator on screen where it just gets in the way, and a desk one also gets in the way.
Quick, tell the ergonomic mouse manufacturers. They've been designing pointing devices that curve nicely into the palm of your hand for years!
That and you're "supposed" to lay your whole arm across the table and use your shoulder and elbow to move the thing, if various anti-RSI pictures are to be believed. Stops so much movement at the wrist and allows you to keep muscles relaxed, y'see.
http://www.rsi-shop.co.uk/products/airobic-mouse-right-handed-white-prev-quill-mouse-usb.asp
and have been for the last 23 years with no ill effects. The mouse carries most of the weight of my hand, and I move east-west by rotating my wrist, while moving north-south by flexing my thumb and fingers against the mouse. How one holds a mouse is a matter of personal choice, The Indomitable Gall, so I must disagree with your proposal to make all mice to force people to use them in what you consider to be the correct way.
Obviously that means that this calculator mouse wouldn't be much good to me personally, since my palm would be pressing buttons all over the shop every time I moved it, but it's a good idea nonetheless.
So just when did Canon hire Alan Sugar as new product innovator? Any way they could jam an alarm clock and AM/FM radio into it at the same time? The screen isn't even a nice high res OLED display suitable for displaying arbitrary stuff... it's just a bog standard LCD matrix straight from the 80's. URGH.
Where in the article does it say you'll be forced by law to buy one?
So why the high blood pressure?
It's a mouse with a built in calculator, quite a neat idea really. It doesn't have margin & tax functions, so not for me, but too many buttons would have made it to big, so it does what most people want.
It's been done before. Not only that, but I used to have a "ball" mouse that was also a telephone. Flip up the transparent dial pad cover (where the palm of the hand rested) and it answered the phone!
Unfortunately, it made using the mouse while on the phone, quite difficult and I eventually stopped using it. It also needed an extra cable between the mouse and the wall socket, and also another from the mouse to the ear piece. Totally impractical, but a good idea at the time.
for my netbook - it's a clamshell mouse with a gamepad inside. It's not the best gamepad, but it's better than nothing and the laser tracking is superlative. I'd really pay good money for a bigger meatier one for my desktop.
This calculator one just looks desperate and pointless, like those 90s mousepads with a credit-card calculator in the corner.
If you've got a computer at your desk, why the hell do you need a piddling calculator? If you can't use a calculator app, you really have no business anywhere near a computer. In fact it should be a standard interview question - "Do you want a computer on your desk or a calculator and typewriter?"
Sorry for ranting. I once had a boss who insisted that spreadsheets were manually filled in with figures calculated on desktop calculators because he didn't trust the computer to give the "correct" answers, i.e. without the rounding errors.
Such that you can't access power functions and base conversion without erasing the result in between. £1 spent in the local pound shop gets me a fully scientific calculator with bin and hex that's a lot easier to use than Windows anyway. But this mouse one looks even worse than Microsoft's offering.
Spot on that man!
The clue's in the picture. It's aimed at the iSheep who find it difficult to use a calculator application, 'cos the overpriced piss-poor excuse for a keyboard that came with their computer lacks a numeric keypad.
I can see how it *might* be of use with a notebook keyboard, but it's way too bloody large to consider as a notebook mouse where size-in-bag and usability-on-right-thigh are the two main drivers.
As has been said, if they'd left the screen and calculator functions out of it and concentrated on making this a mouse that doubles as a numeric keypad (or vice versa if that helps to market it), primarily targeted at laptop users, then it would be a sure-fire winner.
Almost genius, but not quite.
Use Windows Calculator - you are joking? The program that produces two different results for 2+3*4 depending on whether it's showing a simple or complex button layout. (Standard gives the wrong answer of 20, and you have to switch to scientific to get the right answer of 14).
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