Mwahaha... Microsoft Optical Mouse by S+ark

[K. Eng]

I won a free Microsoft Optical Mouse by S+ark from our friends over at http://www.laptoplogic.com.

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouse ... px?pid=027

It's a fairly basic mouse, with only right and left click and a scroll wheel, so it's essentially the same as the PS/2 mouse that came with my Dell Desktop in 1999.

The Good: It looks cool. Ok, maybe it doesn't look cool in the pictures, but when you actually plug it it in and the center stripe glows blue, it looks cool The scroll wheel is made of translucent plastic and also glows blue. Scrolling action is very smooth but gives small soft clicks as feedback. I like the shape of the mouse as well. The long, oval shape goes well with my long fingers.

The Bad: The left and right buttons make up the top left and right part of the mouse. While this gives the right and left halves of the mouse a smooth, unbroken appearance, it also makes it very easy to inadvertently hit a button. This can be disastrous in Half Life 2. Pressing secondary fire for one of the guns launches an airburst shell, which can blow you up if you fire it by accident too close to yourself.

I'm going to use this mouse with my ThinkPad! The PS/2 mouse will stay on my tower, since it is more suited to games.