Alex-Davies
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ElizabethS
According to Wikipedia, multi-touch technology is a Canadian invention developed by the University of Toronto's Input Research Group in 1982. However, it wasn’t until Apple bought Fingerworks, and their technology in 2005, and incorporated it into the first iPhone in 2007, that the technology became common place. Now you can find multi-touch on more than just phones – most new laptops have multi-touch gesture control on their track-pads, and Apple released their Magic Mouse in 2009, bringing gestures to the desktop.
Now Microsoft has now jumped into the multi-touch field with their new Touch Mouse (only for Windows 7). In development by Microsoft Research for a number of years, the Touch Mouse is one of the few products that hasn’t really changed that much from its original concept design to a retail product, and it is nice to see Microsoft doing something extremely innovative on the hardware side, something they are not traditionally known for. Microsoft was kind enough to send me one to look at, so read on for my thoughts about it.
When you open the box, you are faced with a mouse that, on the surface, doesn’t look that much different than any other wireless mouse. It is made from black plastic, has a lightly-textured surface, and is shaped so that it can be used by both right and left-handed users. There are no left and right buttons; the entire front of the mouse clicks, and there is a narrow, raised separator running down the centre that defines the left from the right. This separator, which is touch-sensitive, serves as the scroll-wheel, and the front of the mouse has a pattern of gold x’s to indicate which part of the mouse is for gestures.
The bottom of the mouse is bright white, and has a slot for the tiny USB receiver. There is also an on/off switch and a Bluetrack sensor. It uses two AA batteries which, thankfully, are included, and they should last you a few months of use.
Setting up the Touch Mouse in Windows 7 is very easy – all you do is plug the USB dongle in, and Windows will recognize it and download the correct drivers and IntelliPoint software. As soon as this small task is completed, a tutorial pops up to guide you through the different types of gestures you can use with the mouse. There are three different categories of gestures based around how many fingers you use – one finger can use the central scroll slot to move up and down, and swipe across the mouse for left to right scrolling. You can also use your thumb in a curved action to go forward and backwards in a web browser, or to navigate a slide show. If you move two fingers left or right you can use Windows 7’s Aero Snap to make the current window fill half the screen, and two fingers moving up and down minimizes or maximizes a window. The last gesture, which I found the most awkward to do, is the three finger up or down, which displays all the windows on your desktop , similar to OS X’s Expose view, or minimizes them all.
While I found all the gestures easy to memorize, and that they all worked as advertised, I did find it strange that Microsoft chose to omit some other common multi-touch gestures, such as pinch-to-zoom, double-tap to zoom, and two-finger rotation. These are commonly found on other multi-touch devices, like laptop track-pads and touchscreen. Perhaps Microsoft thought it would be hard to pull them off while holding the mouse, but it still would have been nice to have the option to perform them. Perhaps they were worried about infringing on someone’s patents for these gestures – after all 2011 is the year of the patent lawsuit!
A couple of other problems I had with the mouse were with the scrolling, and, more importantly, the mouse clicks. While the touch-scroll bar worked most of the time when scrolling through webpages and documents, I did find that it was a little inconsistent, and sometimes would scroll too far, too fast. Also, since the front of the mouse is essentially one big button instead of two, sometimes, if I right-clicked too close to the centre, I would get a left-click instead. Once I became aware of this issue, with more practice I was able to instinctively click further right, but for the first few days this was an annoying glitch. Ergonomically, while the Touch Mouse is very comfortable to hold, has a great shape, and is a good weight, I do think it is a little small for larger hands -- this is especially apparent when you are trying to do the gestures -- I sometimes found myself having to loosen my grip on the mouse to perform one.
Since the Touch Mouse only works in Windows 7, it is clear that Microsoft designed it around making using Windows itself more efficient – all the gestures are specifically designed to manage windows and tasks, rather than manipulating data within a document. It’s a pity some of the other common multi-touch gestures are not included, but perhaps Microsoft will open its technology so third-party application developers can add functionality to the mouse in their applications.
Overall, I do think that this mouse is a brilliant technology showcase for Microsoft, and if you are looking for a good wireless mouse, I would seriously consider it. Two caveats to keep in mind, though, are that if you have larger hands, the gesturing might be a little awkward, and since it only works in Windows 7, focusing on navigation, and window management, if you are not a heavy multi-tasker using Windows 7, the gesture functionality might be redundant.
You can buy the Microsoft Touch Mouse here for $79.99.
A slide show of some additional pictures of the Touch Mouse:
