The RollerMouse Pro pwn3s all
http://www.contourdesign.com/rollermouse/
there’s a big ball on the side of the device, do you really think sliding it around the table is going to do anything?
Really? That’s hilarious! Reminds me of Star Trek IV with Scotty speaking to the mouse…
The problem with increasing the USB polling rate is that it will decrease your overall USB throughput for that USB host controller
I don’t recommend going to 1000 Hz in software. I think the best choice is probably 500 Hz. It’s unlikely you would notice a jump from 1ms to 2ms, but going from 8ms to 2ms is definitely worth it.
Of course an even better choice is to get a mouse like the Habu or G5/G7 that natively uses the higher polling rates. No changes required…
Wow… I had looked at that mouse in passing but didn’t realize that it was a collaboration with Razer, I just may have to get one now.
I went through a quest of sorts a few months ago. After finding out about the ability to increase the USB polling rate, I thought there must be some kind of utility out there that could make the mouse movement in XP be a little bit smoother, it has always seemed to me that MacOS has had uber nice mouse movement, where I can easily point to one pixel with the tip of the mouse.
I found one person, Aion, who made a driver(?) called MouAccel(http://esreality.hexus.net/?a=postid=1268470) that takes over the entire mouse system in XP, and he had a couple different setups. One of the configurations makes the mouse act like the Quake 3 ballistics in every application… a really amazing piece of work, but none of the different profiles it comes with really satisfied me for daily use. He does provide the source code and I hope somebody takes over his project and makes a GUI with sliders to adjust the ballistics 
I’m a serious gamer and developer, and I gotta say that I love the Logitech G7 gaming mouse for work and play. It’s wireless (but hear me out!), and it does 500 reports per second just like the Habu. With wide, teflon feet, man is it smooth, especially on a gaming mousepad like the SteelPad 5L.
At first, I thought the only downside was battery life. It is an odd mouse. It comes with two quick swap battery packs, so one is always in use and the other is charging in the base station. When one dies (don’t worry, you get a warning light well in advance, but just in case), you can hot swap in about 5 seconds. Later, a friend who works at Logitech informed me that these packs are intentionally small to bring down the weight of the mouse. This does two things, makes for high responsiveness (low inertia) and seriously helps with repetitive stress injury.
The precision is awesome with a 2000 dpi laser, and it also does the hot resolution changing that interests you. Very nice for sniping in-game or as I’ve found for pixel precision in Photoshop. You will also need to drop the resolution when a non-gamer comes to visit your desk and tries to point at anything on your screen. 
I don’t recommend products online very often, but I am very passionate about this mouse. It has improved my work and gaming productivity and health dramatically.
Cheers and thanks for the tasty site!
I’m a little bit concerned with the fact that to change the polling rate, you need to patch a driver… Is there no setting somewhere for this?
On wired vs. wireless mice: wired mice are less complex, perform better, and have lower prices. I just don’t need wireless functionality in a mouse. I can’t even recall the last time the mouse cord got in my way. What problem does it solve for me?
Same concern with wireless keyboards. When was the last time the keyboard cord caused me a problem, or got in my way? Never.
I’m not anti-wireless, but make sure you need wireless before buying it.
Wireless headphones, on the other hand, might be a great investment for me as I am FOREVER getting tangled in my headphone cord. It drives me nuts!
Jeff, if your hand is aching, you need to do more than changing a mouse; otherwise, you may end up with an injury. Although, it does not sound macho (what? a mouse can injure a grown man?), it is a reality. My right hand started aching about three years ago, so I went to see a therapist and ergo specialist at work, and they recommended a few simple exercises as well as changing hands when using the mouse. Operating the mouse with my left hand felt awkward initially, but after a couple of days, I got used to it (I use my left hand most of the time now). After a few weeks, the pain diminished, and I hardly have any issues these days (whenever I feel uncomfortable, I just repeat the exercises). BTW, my co-worker ignored the hand pain for a while, and she ended up with a permanent damage; now she often wears a cast on her arm to minimize the pain. I’m not making this up. Depending on the way you work, you may need additional recommendations, but please take it seriously.
Okay, as a veteran gamer, and a laptop user, I’m going to recommend the following things:
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Wireless headset. If you’re like me, every time you adjust in your seat, you half yank the wired headset off your head. If you can, make sure it’s a USB-based headset.
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Microsoft Intellimouse for $10. Because it really really really doesn’t matter what kind of mouse you have, the server’s pings/lag are going to be the determining factor as to whether or not you got that headshot.
Other than that, you really don’t need anything special or fancy above and beyond whatever hardware you’re going to use. You already know what specs you want from your hardware, and I’m not about to dive in the nVidia vs. ATI debate (which is almost essentially the PC vs. Mac debate all over again). More or less, you’re just looking at making your experience comfortable.
Okay, I see the point about USB polling rate. What about mouse DPI, though? Why would you ever set it to anything but the maximum your mouse supports, let alone often enough to warrant a button right there on the mouse?
Nick, mostly because it gives you a one-button way to change sensitivity “on the fly” at the hardware level without having to delve into Control Panel, Mouse, etc.
Setting a certain DPI as default in the mouse firmware might be helpful, too, so you don’t have to jack up the sensitivity in the control panel every time you hook up a mouse.
If you have USB, you have firmware. Cord or batteries? For me batteries are more trouble than the cord (buying, stocking, changing, disposing, running out). Tried a trackball once, never liked it. Same with touchpads on laptops. They are even worse. I am looking for a laptop that has a parking slot for the mouse, and maybe an automatic cord winder. How about an RFID mouse? No batteries, no cord. Could it be done? Still need a string to tie it to the laptop though.
If you up the polling rate from 125Hz to 1000Hz, wouldn’t that mean that you’re doing the math on mouse coordinates 8x as much as normal? Wouldn’t that have at least a nominal impact on processor speed?
Just curious if I’m thinking about this right.
Alek Davis is right
He said exactly what I mean to say.
Just take care of your hand. It’s the component you can’t replace.
I used to alternate hands to help reduce usage and avoid pain. Eventually I just got a vertical mouse instead of everything has been fine. I tried a gyro mouse also, but didn’t like that as much, although it was faster than trackballs at least.
there’s a big ball on the side of the device, do you really think sliding it around the table is going to do anything?
I’ve seen combination devices that are both a mouse and a trackball at once.
The eyeMouse or maybee iMouse. A set of really cool sunglasses with built in low power IR laser that tracks the movement of your eyeball and the mouse cursor follows.
Want to click, just wriggle your nose like on Bewitched. Double click? Wriggle your nose twice…
Can you imagine going into a busy office and watching all those people wriggling their noses.
Or, the new stress related illness, carpal nasal syndrome…
Jeff,
Long time reader, first post. I especially began liking this site when you referred to my all-time favorite keyboard as the “Keyboard of the Gods”.
Because of that, I am going to buy one of these mice. I bought a wireless mouse for my laptop, but for my home pc, wireless makes no sense on a desk that isn’t going anywhere. Gonna try the duct tape trick too - good advice. Maybe some clear tape would look less ghetto?
As a gamer and software developer, I have several tricks to reducing hand/wrist stress:
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Mouse left at work, mouse right at home. It helps that I’m left handed and grew up mousing right.
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Use trackballs when possible. I use the fabulous but sadly discontinued a href=http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-D68-00007-Trackball-Explorer/dp/B00005853Ztrackball explorer/a at home, and a 2-button Dell optical USB mouse at work. It helps that the twitchiest games I play nowadays are MMOs. There was a time when I used a laser mouse for twitch gaming and the trackball for all else. My laser mouse (MX500) had a battery failure a year ago and I haven’t bothered to fix it since. Still using the trackball.
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Split key keyboards, gel wrist pads.
I’ve noticed that your article completely missing the point to polling rates (so does all modern mouse advertising).
Your standard USB mouse like the Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical 1.1 is a 400dpi sensor with a 8bit controller, at ~1.1m/s the 8bit buffer overflows before 8ms so programmers figured out a way of flushing the buffer quicker, this is all it is for, not reduced latency (if you can feel the latency it could be Angle snapping, prediction or jitter caused by overloading the controller).
Low Sens pro gamers can get near 2m/s.
P.S. I found an actual benchmark, Mouse Score 2007, that tests mice properly, for things like buffer overload, jitter, and malfunctioning at high speeds and explains these things in more detail.
Under a technicality for those that ask why would you use a gaming mouse for everyday:
- Once you get comfortable with a mouse, you will be so used to it, that anything else feels weird to use. I have played with your average factory mouse, then I have played with a gaming mouse, once I got used to the gaming mouse’s response, I was hooked. I refused to switch back.
2)To Nick: The DPI being changed is a good thing, It is essentially the sensitivity of your mouse, If you lower the dpi, the slower it will move, the higher, and watch out speed racer - For the guys over 40 here 
- Yes, it is possible to permanently damage your hand by a mouse, sadly. If you want to prevent this, a gaming mouse will help you, due to the fact that most are more ergo designed now, but it still is recommended to take about 10 minutes every hour to cool off your hand and eyes.
~Happy Hunting for your mouse, By the way, this guy above me should be banned, in my opinion. Since he is most likely a 12 year old snot nosed brat, I wont stoop to his maturity and get into a gamers war with him. At 18, I better set a good example for the future!
i got a habu too. took 3 hours to get the firmware and software to get cozy (known problem for 1.0 firmware) but once i got the firmware up (one easy patch.) the mouse is the BEST mouse ive ever used.