You may recall our incredulity when SteelSeries announced their 15-button MMO Mouse. Not one to be passed by, Razer shortly thereafter came out with the 17-button Naga, which we’ll be reviewing soon. But unknown to them, a small team was working in obscurity to create an 18-button mouse… with an analog stick for your thumb, to boot.
The OpenOfficeMouse, or OOMouse, isn’t exactly the most attractive piece of hardware, but its creator claims that “16 buttons divided into two 8-button halves were the maximum number of buttons that could be efficiently used by feel alone.” I guess if you take the thumb out of the equation with the analog stick, which Razer nor SteelSeries had the wherewithal to do, that’s probably true. They’ve set up profiles to make the OOMouse work with WoW, 3D Studio Max, Firefox, and many others — including, of course, the whole OpenOffice suite.
Personally I’m not a mega-mouse kind of person; ergonomics are far more important for me considering the amount of mousing i have to do, which is why I’m considering the Microsoft Natural as an alternative to the G500 and Mamba, which I switch between to keep things interesting. And while this OOMouse may look ridiculous, I’m sure there are some people who will find it a joy.
This has to be a joke, no? It’s not April 1st.
I’d… actually buy that? lol
I agree with Joshua. I initially thought it was a stupid idea, but looking at it (and especially hearing about the thumb-stick) it would probably be useful for Flash, Photoshop, et al.
Just bring back the 21 inch square digitizer tablet and five button wireless puck and I’ll be one happy camper!
I loved my Kurta digitizer.
lol is this the anti Apple mouse.
I want it but not with a cord. Give me a BlueTooth edition and I’m hitting the purchase button on Amazon.
oh i’d definitely give it a shot! i love my 9 button mouse and im quite sure i could find a few more tasks to assign to a single mouse click.
sure its not the most attractive thing, but if its easy enough to use by feel (which it sounds like OpenOffice put some research to find out) im sure i could get to working with it very quickly.
Crikey an 18 button mouse! Who on earth would find use for a 18 button mouse! I dont get it, I could use a three button mouse to go to my desktop but it would drive me nuts to have 18 buttons.
I want this for Warcraft.
Baha. WoW noobs already started!
I see this being more useful for gamers than office folks. How many people in an office can barely wrap their heads around e-mail and word processing? How will they learn a mouse with 18 buttons? haha
And really… Only one scroll wheel!? We live in a 3D world, we need at least 3 scroll wheels right?
Ugly. As. Sin.
I’ll stick to my Logitech Wave keyboard/mouse set, thanks.
I’d take a trackball with this number of buttons. But surely no serious computer users use mice these days?
I am a serious computer user, and I use a mouse. And don’t call me Shirley.
Yeah… he prefers to be called Gladys!
Isn’t this getting a little bit too much, I mean 18 buttons! if this carries on growing you will be moving the equivalent of a keyboard around!
I currently use a Nostromo N52 Speedpad (http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=164714) for my left hand to sit on. I do AutoCAD work, mainly, and there’s lots of commands to program into that, which makes life a lot simpler. I’m really considering on of these mice with buttons, though – that might make life even easier. I’m not sure how it’d feel with my fingers resting on top of those buttons, though. It seems like normal left and right-clicking would often cause you to click other buttons inadvertantly.
Didn’t they have a keyboard that was just split down the middle, so the entire right side would glide around, and that was your mouse?
That might work better than this. Mousing, you only actually have five fingers to work with over there, not really sure why they missed this part in the quality control.
Honestly, what would all of those buttons do?
I think it need some more buttons LOL
Can anyone say…
bind “Mouse1″ “kill”
bind “Mouse2″ “kill”
bind “Mouse3″ “kill”
bind “Mouse4″ “kill”
bind “Mouse5″ “kill”
bind “Mouse6″ “kill”
bind “Mouse7″ “kill”
bind “Mouse8″ “kill”
bind “Mouse9″ “kill”
bind “Mouse10″ “kill”
bind “Mouse11″ “kill”
bind “Mouse12″ “kill”
bind “Mouse13″ “kill”
bind “Mouse14″ “kill”
bind “Mouse15″ “kill”
bind “Mouse16″ “kill”
bind “Mouse17″ “kill”
bind “Mouse18″ “kill”
dim bindings as long
const bindquote as string = “bind” & chr(32,34) & “Mouse”
const killquote as string = chr(34,32,34) & “kill” & chr(34)
open “mouse.ini” for output as #1
do until bindings > 18
bindings += 1
print #1, bindquote & str(bindings) & killquote
loop
close #1
awsome
Reading this just made me go out an buy lots more Apple.
Windows users, just install autohotkey and reap the benefits of turning any key into a meta-key, binding mouse chords, gestures and rocking gestures per-application and more.
i would buy somethin like dis. it is interesting, and with my machine, i can set it up so each of the 18 buttons work to do a specific macro, like app switcher, expose, dock, spaces, ect.
LOL thats too many buttons for me. Ill be constantly accidentally puching the wrong thing.