Looks Like a Duck, Quacks Like a Duck, But Really a Tool of The Conspiracy
Written: Aug 09 '03 (Updated Aug 09 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Wireless. Ridiculous range. Fast sample rate, good sensor resolution, comfortable, ambidexterous, &c.
Cons: Now I need to buy batteries for my mouse...
The Bottom Line: Good mouse, useless driver.
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| zero_'s Full Review: Microsoft Wireless Optical Blue (K80-00002) Mouse |
I am presented with a problem. I have a Wacom Graphire graphics tablet, complete with its own slick but very cheap RF batteryless wireless mouse. Said mouse is good for desktop tasks, but is becoming annoying for gaming. Said mouse must also always be used on its own special expensive little mousepad (the tablet itself), which is fast becoming bothersome.
I, of course, have been jaded by my wireless mouse. Mouse cables p*ss me off. I’ve got enough wires in, on, around, and behind my desk already. I think having a wire hanging off of something I’m going to be moving around all day is silly.
Enter the Microsoft Wireless Intellimouse Blue. Well, I’m just going to call it the “Blue”, because “Microsoft Wireless Intellimouse Blue” sounds like something the marketing department whacked with the mediocrity stick.
In any event, this is a wireless optical mouse, made by (or at least rebadged by – I have no idea how cheap these things can be had from Super Lucky A-Star in Taiwan) everyone’s favorite operating system bungling, market monopolizing, goose stepping, 900 pound gorilla of a software company, Microsoft. I hear people heading for the exits already.
It’s not that bad, though. As a matter of fact, this mouse is actually quite good. It’s just let down by its driver software, which verges on uselessness. What, Microsoft mess up a piece of software? Why, whatever made you think they’d do something like that?.
The mouse comes in two parts – The mouse itself (natch) and a oblong blue receiver, which plugs into your computer’s USB port. There is an included USB to PS/2 adapter with this mouse. It does not work very well. Let us not speak of it. The mouse itself is symmetrical and mouse shaped, silver on the top and blue around the edges, with frivolous see through red plastic on the bottom. Left and right click, firm but responsive clickable mouse wheel, buttons all in the right place, nothing extra grafted on, nothing to see here.
The mouse has no way to power its sensors and optics, so it requires two AA batteries. I got my mouse used. I don’t remember if there were batteries in the original box. A pair of AA cells can be had for approximately nothing nowadays, though, and I’m sure you have a set or three lying around already. I use rechargeable NiMH cells in my mouse – More on that later.
This is, in case you hadn’t gathered, an optical mouse. Instead of a rolling ball in the bottom of the mouse to track movement it uses a teeny tiny little camera illuminated by a red LED, apparently monitored by little tiny goblins inside the mouse that report which way it’s moving. Lots of people take it for granted, but optical mouse technology is really freaky. And really cool. And, y’know, it lights up.
The upshot of all of this is you don’t need a hard, flat surface to engage the ball on the mouse, because there isn’t one. An optical mouse is just at home on your floor, wall, pants leg, or couch cushion as it is on your mouse pad. There’s also no ball to get dirty, no internal rollers to scuff up, and nothing to wear out.
So this mouse includes not one but two outstanding features to wow us techno-neanderthals. It lights up, and it’s wireless. Microsoft is being unusually quiet in their marketing propaganda regarding what radio frequency, exactly, the mouse uses. I imagine it’s something in the 900 mhz range. I could be wrong. In any event, for a mouse this thing has all kinds of range, can very reliably stay connected at normal desktop ranges, and doesn’t seem to suffer anywhere in the performance department because of its wireless nature. Lots of wireless mice I’ve used do. This is a Good Thing.
Out of the box you can just plug the mouse into any USB aware operating system (even, gasp, a Macintosh) and you should be away. It’s a standard Human Interface Device (HID) so anything that understands the HID standard should work with this mouse. Earlier Windows versions may nag you for their disk the first time you plug the mouse in (Win98, ME). Others should be fine. Other HID compliant devices include later Mac OS versions, PocketPC’s with USB host capability, and the Playstation 2.
You can also install the bundled IntelliPoint software if you like, but this is rather pointless as it doesn’t actually do anything that the standard Windows (or Windows 2000, at least – That’s my test machine) mouse control panel doesn’t let you do anyway. The only things that it does that I can discern are: A) Make your mouse show up as a “MS Wireless IntelliMouse Blue” in hardware manager instead of a generic Intellimouse, B) Change all the icons in the mouse control panel to purple ones, and C) Stick crap in your system tray that you don’t need. Okay, you can also use the IntelliPoint software to change what happens when you click the mouse wheel, which I did (I bind it to enter by default). However, you can’t change what the wheel does when you roll it as I could with my Graphire and older Logitech mice. I generally bound the mouse wheel to emulate the up and down arrow keys on the keyboard, so I could use the mouse wheel to pick things from lists, select files in explorer, change tracks in Winamp, &c. Combined with the click-to-enter, this makes the mouse wheel a lot more useful, in my opinion, and lets to do fun things like dismiss dialog boxes without moving your mouse, open files without having to point to them, &c. With a wireless mouse that works through walls it would be fun to do this sort of thing from the next room over with the Blue. Alas, you can’t.
I’ve emailed Microsoft consumer relations about adding this feature; A patch is expected to be released sometime in late 2016. Don’t hold your breath, kids.
On to performance. All USB mice under Windows will do their very best to refresh at 125 hz. That means the position of the mouse cursor gets updated 125 times per second. PS/2 mice will refresh at whatever rate they please, but usually do so at about 60 hz. Serial mice refresh at something like 35 hz, which is pretty ugly and quite visibly makes the mouse cursor jump across the screen in little steps instead of smooth motion.
125 hz is just how fast Windows asks the mouse for its updated position. Some USB mice and nearly all wireless mice don’t actually refresh this fast. So windows thinks things are running smoothly at 125 hz, but the mouse is just repeating every other position update, or every third, or repeating two for every one, or whatever. Net result: Ugly mouse movement.
The Blue doesn’t do this. I tested it with Mouserate (a freely available tool that tests mouse refresh rate) and its score hovered neatly between 124 and 126 hz. Mice that refresh quickly, in addition to being more comfortable and less irritating overall to use, are good for games (especially first person shooters where you aim and turn with the mouse) and graphic design. They also make people that use serial mice really, really envy your computer.
The mouse works from quite a distance from its little receiver. At my friend’s house we could get a strong signal from the end of the hallway outside the room with the computer in it, which put the signal through a bathroom and a wetwall. With my setup I can control my mouse cursor from the kitchen, which rendered only slightly useless as I cannot see what I’m doing with my mouse from there. But that’s still not too shabby for a pointing device. You could use this thing to power boardroom presentations from the far end of the table, for instance, or to control your lounge room PC hooked up to your TV with the fancy video card from the comfort of your couch.
Since this mouse uses batteries, you’ll obviously have to replace them eventually. A pair of regular alkaline cells will last about six months of heavy use. The mouse never completely turns off, but it dims its red LED considerably if you don't move it for a few seconds. If you put the mouse in a position where it cannot find a surface to stare at with its camera the LED will dim and eventually turn itself off, flashing once every five seconds or so to let you know that the mouse is still alive, and otherwise go into a standby mode until you press one of its buttons. A single red LED doesn’t draw a whole heck of a lot of power, and the mouse obviously pulses it to save power, even while you’re moving it. LED’s don’t have a “startup cost” like regular lightbulbs do – They run at the same voltage and amperage all the time, so an LED that’s being pulsed such that it’s only on 50% of the time (but is blinking so fast that your eye perceives it as being on constantly) will use roughly 50% of the power it normally would if it really were on all the time.
Bottom line: This thing lasts a bloody long time on a single set of batteries. I’m using NiMh rechargeable batteries in mine, partially because I’m cheap, partially because I’m a geek, and partially because I have a lot of them lying around. I don’t expect them to last quite as long in the mouse – They loose their charge over time anyway – But what the mouse draws from the batteries should come very close to the cell’s shelf life anyway. I estimate 4 months use with rechargeables, but even if they last two months less than alkalines I can just recharge the blighters and off I go for (comparatively) free.
The Blue, of course, has its battery bay configured so that rechargeable cells will not work in it. Most rechargeables are very, very slightly shorter than brand name alkaline cells and the hard contact in the mouse will not make reliable contact with the second battery. I think this is a conspiracy between Microsoft and Duracell so you’ll make two more battery purchases per year than you normally would. Me, I just took a screwdriver and bent the contact out a half a millimeter, and it works for me. Whatever. The batteries are a little tricky to get out of this mouse, but you only have to change ‘em twice a year so that’s forgivable versus them flying out in your laptop bag or what have you.
And, unlike some other mice I could mention, the Blue’s optical sensor works very well and isn’t wont to flip out at random intervals, turn your diagonal movements into stairsteps, or stop responding at inopportune moments. This, too, is a Good Thing.
You can even use more than one Microsoft Wireless product in the same room at the same time. The same friend I got this mouse from has another (he got it in a package deal with an MS wireless keyboard), and both mice work with both receivers. To connect the mouse for the first time or in troublesome conditions you simply press the connect button on your receiver and then the connect button on your mouse. In seconds you have your very own radio channel to play on, and your mouse won’t conflict with anyone else’s in the room. We routinely use both wireless mice in the same room at the same time with nary a hitch. My mouse also works under the umbrella of my wireless network and my wireless headphones with no ill effects.
Bottom line: It’s a great mouse with outstanding performance and reliability that just happens to be wireless and just happens to be made by Microsoft. If it weren’t for the totally useless driver software this mouse would be a perfect ten. Until they let me bind my arrow keys, though, the big MS gets four stars on this one. Recommended all the same, though.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 15 (30 ret.)
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Epinions.com ID:
zero_
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Member: Robert "Zero" Drendall
Location: Claymont, DE, United States
Reviews written: 99
Trusted by: 19 members
About Me:
Providing your semi-regular dose of extreme verbosity since somewhere around the turn of the century.
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