Best Mouse I've Ever Used. Accurate, Customizable and Effortless
Pros:
Totally customizable, simple design, very accurate pointing and clicking.
Cons:
Higher price than conventional Mice
The Bottom Line:
Both wired and wireless Mighty Mice deliver excellent performance, ease of use and do so without eliciting grumbling form the user.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
There is a twisted phrase which goes something like this: “Hell hath no tenacity like that of a convert.” Call me a convert who switched to the Mac after 25 years in the PC world. As a PC user I always hated “mice”. They never worked well and I always had to pick them up and move them back up onto my pad and then scroll, move or highlight further. I always used simple, two button trackballs or touchpads.
Apple’s one button mouse always seemed very sensible but not real exciting. In WinXP I became addicted to the right click option to open context menus. I never cared for the scroll wheels because they didn’t work well.
Apple clearly has studied all of these issues because the Mighty Mouse is abut the closest thing to perfection that I can find. Traditional Mac users will enjoy being able to configure it as a one button mouse. I on the other hand, enjoyed being able to set-up the secondary “button” and scroll ball. Hey, they actually work and they work well.
The Mighty Mouse uses optical tracking to send a signal to the computer. There are no moving parts except for the click switch and there is only one switch. It can sense left and right from pressure which amazes me. Two side half-circle areas allow Exposé to be engaged to separate all of the panes on the screen so they can all be seen at once.
There are no ball bearings, wheels, pads, etc. The bottom of the Mighty Mouse is an elliptical ring which glides on a mouse pad or other surface. The design is simplicity itself and in Tiger (10.4.8) it is fully customizable. The Mighty Mouse comes with a manual and installation CD which you don’t even need if you are running up-to-date Tiger. If you are not running 10.4.8, the CD will add these functions to System Preferences for you.
The scroll ball is a delight to this PC user who came in from the cold. It works in both up and down and left and right dimensions. It’s simply effortless to scroll ACCURATELY within any document, web page, menu, etc. Apple scrolling is also a huge improvement over the PC world. It works. Period.
The Mighty Mouse is simple to install, set-up and use. It can simulate an old style mouse or let the user customize functions all you want. At $49 it is not a cheap mouse when most mice are selling for less than half of that price but the ergonomics are outstanding and it points accurately. I can’t imagine not having one.
The Bluetooth version is even more amazing, able to wake a sleeping Mac from across the room. Mac Bluetooth really works. The initial connection process took only seconds and after that the computer and mouse connect flawlessly. The only problem was when I tried this with a Bluetooth-equipped PC. PC Bluetooth is not ready for prime time. Some get it to work. Some do not. I was in the latter category. After ten minutes, the PC managed to find itself. That’s right. It found itself via Bluetooth. It was so slow in scanning that the Bluetooth Mighty Mouse kept going to sleep because it was bored. I never managed a successful connection although I have heard it is possible with this mouse and many PCs. It was, however, designed for the Mac which is where it really shows what it can do.
I call both versions outstanding products.
