Crazies pay 100 bucks for mice devices

KIDS AND ADULTS with more money than sense are spending vast racks of doubloons on pointing devices, or mices as we call them.

A report on Nikkei reckons that Japanese firm Logicool is flogging a mouse called the MX-R for ¥12,800.

Apple's so-called "Mighty Mouse" costs a staggering ¥8,600 and some people even use it with Microsoft Windows.

In the bad old days of PCs, pointing devices, or mices as we call them, were very expensive. A quick dekko at a reseller manual from 1986 we edited shows that the Microsoft Mouse (bus version) cost £175 (¥43,245) plus VAT and that's what the serial version cost too.

Mouse Systems, with its PC Mouse, attempted to undercut the Vole then by flogging its version for £167 ($337) plus VAT. So it goes. µ