28 August 2007

Apple Mighty Mouse

I managed to get my grubby little hands on a Apple Mighty Mouse. Its the bluetooth version. What enthralled me was the little scroll ball. I guess in my old age, Im finding using a scroll wheel inaccurate for small increments and tiresome for long pages. When I tried the Mighty Mouse at the new Mac shop in KLCC, I was won over.
So on my ubuntu machine, I plugged in the bluetooth dongle. On the command line I typed in:

# hidd --search

The Mighty Mouse blinked, and on screen, the taskbar displayed this popup:
Clicking on it will display this dialog:
And the default passkey for the Apple bluetooth Mighty Mouse is "0000".

Infortunately the command returned this error:
# hidd --search
Searching ...
Connecting to device 00:14:51:C4:55:71
HID create error 13 (Permission denied)

Which was strange. I could only use the root login to successfully pair with the mouse.

However once paired, the mouse worked like a charm. The scroll ball was smooth and extremely efficient. However I can't seem to get it to scroll horizontally. Perhaps its not supported yet?

The three button feature of the Mighty Mouse was ok, although disconcerting considering the entire upper body of the mouse is one big button. Im finding the weight of the device heavy. I hope it doesnt lead to RSI in the future.

Im looking for a good mouse to use at work. Considering Im on the PC 80% of the time, Id wont mind investing in a really good mouse. I don't really need the bluetooth feature, and I noticed that the Mac shop was selling the USB version for RM199. The American e-bay sell them at USD29 but shipping is about USD20 = USD49 = RM171. Hardly worth the savings.

Still undecided. I wonder if there are any other mice out there with the same scroll ball?


yk.

[Update: Info on getting horizontal scroll here ]