gus torres: illustration - animation - design

This article states that the Macintosh is making inroads again (obviously not like in the glory days, but enough to be noticed) with a fresh awareness of Apple due to the popularity of the iPod. The increase in Mac purchases seems to be happening as people upgrade their home machines while still being required to use Windows-based PC’s at work.

Find out more here… (courtesy of MacNN)

A while back, I wrote about Apple’s Mighty Mouse. Well I kind of gushed about it to be honest, but a week later I returned it. It, like a long line of computer mice (mouses?), never felt quite right and actually started to cause me pain in my wrist and forearm.

I’m a left-handed mouser and in my previous entry about the Mighty Mouse I pretty much described the headaches of trying to find just the right mouse. Though Apple’s new mouse wasn’t quite it (though it came closer than any other at the time), I finally did find a mouse that finally worked wonderfully for me.

Still not perfect (and I’ll explain why shortly), the Razer Copperhead High Precision Gaming Mouse has come as close to what I’ve been looking for in a mouse. And I’ve tried and returned them all (at least the one’s that are for both left- and right-handed use). Designed exclusively for gaming, it has a 2000 dpi laser and incredible response time (like Logitech’s gaming mouse). There’s also on-board memory to maintain those customized driver settings and the ability to change DPI on the fly. Physically similar to Razer’s other gaming mouse, the Diamondhead (which I also tried then returned because it was too uncomfortable after extended use), this one has a higher arch in the center. That has made this mouse the most comfortable one for me since my old MS Wheel Mouse Optical and I can use it for long stretches of time without discomfort.

Now I’m not a gamer, not by any means. Fast frame rates make me motion sick for one thing. But I have found the accuracy and overall smooth tracking of this mouse has helped me when I’m working on details in Photoshop or laying down bezier curves in Illustrator. The mouse also has up to 7 programmable buttons but I’ve set them to similar settings to the Mighty Mouse and that serves me fine.

There are a few issues which, though minor for me, may be problematic for others. This mouse was not designed for the Mac. USB Overdrive doesn’t recognize the additional buttons. OS X 10.4 Tiger’s built in mouse preference pane still allows you to choose primary and secondary mouse functions which translate to the mouse perfectly well and you can control Exposé and Dashboard functions through the middle (scroll click), third and fourth button, that’s all you can do out of the box. This may have to do with the fact that driver settings are saved in this on-board mouse memory. PC users have all sorts of additional options and it took me loading the drivers to an older PC (Virtual PC doesn’t work either) to finally access and configure the settings to my liking.

Understandably, this is obviously a deal-breaker for many Mac users, but for me I’ve found a comfortable, well-built, and incredibly accurate mouse that I can finally use. My search is over!