Real Mice (was real keyboards ...)

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

Since we are moaning about real hardware, is there anything available these days that comes even close to the Logitech ergonomic three button mouse from the mid-late 1990s?  The sculpted to fit in your hand model?  Before the scroll wheel abomination had been invented?  They were a joy to behold, let alone use.

I suspect most people here still use the middle mouse button on a regular basis; I'm surprised there isn't more hue and cry about their demise :-)

I spend a lot of time using Plan 9, and - on Unix-ish systems - acme.  Both of those are simply untenable without B2 on the mouse.  The enthusiasts have found a few holdouts - primarily an HP 3-button mouse.  But it's made of plastic, and has no mass.  The Logitech had *body* to it.  You *knew* where it was going when you moved it, and it was comfortable to use all day long.

Surprisingly, the closest replacement I found for the big beast was a (Kingston?) bluetooth travel mouse I bought about 10 years ago.  It was quite tiny, but that meant it fit very comfortably under my palm.  It had the eeevil scroll wheel, but it was very small in proportion to the middle button, so as to be just slightly annoying.  And the mouse was dense!  It had mass, even before you fed it the pair of AA batteries.

Sadly, the buttons on it have packed it in.  I think I'll hold a wake for it this weekend ;-)

--lyndon

P.S.  Who has the patent on the logitech mouse?  Maybe we can get a Kickstarter campaign going to buy it and roll out another production run!?