I had no idea there was such an anti-mouse following out there. But it makes sense really. I blame excessive and probably improper use of the mouse for screwing my whole right side, especially my shoulder and back. I had a theory that it was just due to overall right-hand dominance but I’m not sure that’s the cause. Lately, as soon as I assume the “mouse position” it only takes about 5 minutes for things to get uncomfortable. I’m starting to realise like some others out there, that the mouse is far from being the most ergonomically designed peripheral out there.

I recently switched to a Laser Mouse 6000 but I think it’s actually less ergonomic than my old IntelliMouse which was the best mouse I’ve ever used, but had the unfortunate time induced flaw of spontaneously double clicking when you just single click. I don’t like the Laser Mouse as much because they shrunk the back and forward buttons and moved them away from where my thumb actually is. I used to be able to instantly click the back button and it was greatl mapped to undo in some apps, and to reload in FPS games. But those extra milliseconds of “seek time” have made the smaller back button useless now. OK, so I’m not a hardcore gamer or anything, but it feels easier to reach for the backspace key in Firefox rather than use the puny mouse buttons for “Back”.

A while back, to try and ease my mouse woes, I swapped mouse hands and tried to use the keyboard as much as possible. It was OK for a while, but my productivity is not great left-handed, and I would instinctively switch back to the right hand without even realising it. But there’s another problem with the right handed mouse.

I’ve always thought the standard keyboard is a bit ridiculous for a right-mouse-handed person. I look at it and just think “does not compute.” I know the numpad is on the right because it speeds up numerical data entry if you’re right handed. I much prefer to type numbers on the numpad, especially things like IP addresses. But you want the main alphabet section directly in front of you, but if you do, the numpad and arrows etc. that eat up all your right hand space where the mouse should go. A solution would be a keyboard with a numpad on the left or a detachable numpad that you could put back on the right for extended number crunching.

But alas, the problem of the unergonomic mouse remains. There are some new ones out there, even some sideways ones which might be better. But I don’t really want to shell out $100 or more for a mouse that might be just as crap or worse than my current one. Maybe I should just use the Wiimote, although accuracy could be a problem. (Link note: Cool, but wouldn’t connecting via Bluetooth be simpler?)