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| Kensington PocketMouse Pro Wireless - Aug 8, 2003 2:34am - review |  |
 One thing I miss when I use a laptop is a mouse. Trackpads aren't bad, but I'm a mouse kinda guy. I've had an iBook for nearly four years now, and I always try to have a mouse nearby. But not just any mouse will do for me; I like to have two buttons, and preferably a scroll wheel. So for three long years I had a three-button mouse from Contour Design. It worked, but it wasn't anything special. And then I discovered the joy of the Kensington PocketMouse Pro Wireless.The PocketMouse Pro Wireless is nearly exactly the same as the old PocketMouse Pro (which my brother David reviewed last year), but without the cord. It's an optical mouse, with two buttons and a wonderful scroll wheel. It's a joy to use... I just love holding the mouse! It has a nice comfortable feel that fits my medium-sized hand perfectly. There's one feature of the PocketMouse Pro Wireless that really sold me on it. Since I use my mice only on a laptop, I like mice that travel well. And boy does this mouse travel well. Most of the wireless mice I looked into had a big USB dock that you had to plug in for the mouse to connect with. This mouse is different. Rather than a large dock, it has simply a tiny little antenna that plugs into your USB port. In fact, it's so small that it actually fits inside the mouse! When you're not using the mouse, say for instance when you pack up your laptop and you're taking it to the library, you just pop open the antenna cover on the mouse, unplug the antenna, and stick it inside the mouse. As soon as the plug is inside the mouse, it turns itself off, saving your two precious AAA batteries lives. This mouse works fine in Mac OS X without any extra software. Even the second mouse button and scroll wheel function properly, thanks to Jaguar's great mouse support. However, Kensington provides excellent software (installed as a preference pane in your system preferences) that allows you to customize all the button clicks for different applications. In fact, I was blown away by Kensington's wonderful Mac OS X support, after suffering through years of Contour Design's minimal support for the Mac at all with my old mouse. I really only have one complaint with this mouse. It seems to eat through my batteries pretty fast, and doesn't have a charger. It takes two AAA batteries. In the past 8 months, I've had to replace the batteries three or four times... they've generally lasted about a month and a half to two months in general use. I think if I were to store the antenna whenever I wasn't using my laptop, I'd get much better life though... I tend to leave it turned on at least 80% of the day (including overnight). Once I buy a pair of rechargeable AAA's, I think I'll be much happier. So I'd have to say that overall I'd give this beautiful mouse a perfect 5 out of 5 fish. If you're interested, Amazon sells them for about $42 as of this writing ($8 off retail).
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