I have one of Microsoft’s higher-end wireless mouses. One of the newer features they’ve incorporated with this one is the tilt wheel that lets you scroll left or right. It doesn’t have all kinds of extra buttons, and the shape of the mouse pleases me.
But the scrollwheel. I hate it. It doesn’t “click” as you scroll; instead, it scrolls smoothly. This has two ill effects. First, it’s very susceptible to something falling into the mechanism and making the wheel tacky, but only in certain radii. So right now I can scroll up smoothly, but as soon as 2 inches of screen goes by, the whole scroll wheel feels like it’s submerged in gummy bear protoplasm. But that’s nothing compared to the other annoyance.
The other ill effect from the smooth scrolling affects the middle-clicking. You can’t. I mean, you can, but it takes considerable dexterity and concentration to do so, because while you’re trying to click the wheel, the wheel is not locked into position and it tries to scroll. If you try to scroll when you’re clicking, you don’t click. Very irritating.
The tilt wheel is completely overrated. I never use it. Maybe it’s because I don’t do a lot of side scrolling. Or maybe because it requires significant force to tilt the wheel one way or the other. Note that it doesn’t register a degree or tilt, just that you’ve tilted it past a certain point, and then the resulting action on screen is a constant speed.
I’m liking the look of some of the Logitech wireless mouses. They’re sleek and accurate, and they all “click”.
