The Mouse That Died

Kyla often plays online Flash games using my Mac. She isn't very good with the trackpad, so I let her use my mouse instead.  Over the holiday weekend she dropped my bluetooth Mighty Mouse on the floor and it broke. She's only three and I should have known better than to have her use my $80 mouse (now they're only $70, but that's what I paid).

So now I'm left wondering what kind of mouse I should replace it with. Most people don't really pay attention to what type of mouse they use, but a mouse is the main means by which we interact with our computers and a good mouse can be significant productivity boost.

One of the most baffling moments in my career was when I was at a client who had just issued me a brand new high end, dual-Xeon workstation... along with the very cheapest ball mouse on the market. This was really stupid.  Why have me use some $2,500 monster computer with a $5 mouse whose ball would get constantly stuck and required several minutes of my time every week to pull the thing apart and clean it? The extra $15 for a decent laser mouse would have been quickly recouped since I was an hourly consultant.

I don't know whether I should get a new Mighty Mouse, or go with something more exotic like the Logitech VX series.  The Mighty Mouse wasn't perfect, it felt like half the time it didn't register a right-click correctly and bluetooth is overrated since I always had to re-pair it after the connection was lost, but after having gone without it for about a day I realize how often I used the horizontal scroll, and I don't see anything comparable in other mice.

If I do go for another Mighty Mouse I might wait a couple of weeks since conventional wisdom dictates that you shouldn't buy any Apple products prior to Macworld.  I haven't yet heard of any rumors regarding a new mouse, but after following keynotes for a few years now I know that there is typically at least one thing revealed that the rumor sites didn't catch wind of.