The Alpha is an architecture that will be around for the next 20 years
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18-button mouse is back in black
WHEN BRITISH COMPANY Warmouse announced last month that is was releasing an 18-button desktop mouse specifically designed to work with Openoffice.org, we sniggered about it for a few minutes, decided it was probably a joke, and consigned it to forever languish in the dustbin of digital detritus that is the Inquirer office floor (the bins filled up many months ago).
Some eroneous reports have suggested that the folks at Sun's Openoffice HQ didn't really want anything to do with the slightly eccentric button freaks at Warmouse, despite it insisting that it had got emails and everything saying that it was okay to use the logo, honest....
But for some reason the OO version of the mouse is no more and, no doubt realising that it'd paid a shedload of money for very expensive tooling, and having lost what it thought was a money spinning-hook on which to hang the multi-buttoned monster, Warmouse had a major rethink, invested in a pot of black paint, and announced to the world that its new 18-button mouse - which really isn't anything like the old Openoffice.org one at all, honest - has been specifically developed for gamers.
Faintly reminiscent of the arse end of an armadillo, the Warmouse Meta - to use its full name - features a new high resolution laser as well as the aforementioned array of 18 buttons, sensibly arranged in two three-by-three grids of nine on either side of a clickable scroll wheel. The model we have seen features an X-Box style joystick that would nestle comfortably under the thumb of right-handed users, though its not clear how those of a sinister disposition - that's lefties to the rest of you - will cope.
Just about everything can be tweaked and programmed using the supplied Meta Modeware software, and the company is even offering to make custom macros that can be imported and exported in XML for any obscure software that has fallen out of the net on request. You can even output your button assignments as a PDF file, which should help you to keep your fingers untangled.
Up to sixteen preset keys or macros can also be assigned to the side mounted joystick, effectivley making this a 34 button mouse.
All of which leads us to ask the question, why didn't it just weld a mouse to the bottom of a keyboard and have done with it?
We're sure that someone will find a use for this surprisingly intriguing monstrosity and it's telling that the list of currently compatible games is headed up by the best selling game of all time, World of Warcraft. Warcrack addicts are bound to be taken in by the possibility of having 18 spells or melée actions attached to their own buttons.
We'll leave the final word to the man who is responsible for releasing this mutant rodent into the wild, lead designer Theo Beale:
"It's real, it's brutal, and it's going to fundamentally change what people expect of their input devices. There are some of the opinion that the Meta is insane, but we believe there are many gamers and power users who want to be able to do more than stroke their mouse with two fingers."
Nutter. µ
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...thankfully, I don't play it anymore.
This mouse is a few years too late.
Actually, a friend of mine has become handicapped in that he can't use his left hand. Depending on the feel of this mouse, he might be able to do PC Gaming again. He wouldn't need 18 buttons, but using the mouse for looking, and the small joystick for movement, that might work.
"..arse end of an armadillo.."
you owe me a new keyboard :D
@WarMouse: Heh, fun to see the responses! I had no doubt that you could assign "L1" and "R1" as you describe, just pointing it out to others.
In fact, there's some benefit to having the tactile feel of physical buttons (try to teach an elderly first-time mouser the Mighty Mouse); maybe that's an idea to run with as far as adding texture on the next version. (Though cleaning skin debris out of textured surfaces is a pain, so maybe not.)
The Alt-key thing was about OO.o offering a ridiculously limited set of keybindings in at least recent 3.x, nothing to do with your product. The mouse might be able to bind Alt-anything but OO.o refuses to let you customize it to listen for Alt-anything, which is quite limiting.
(Thinking about it now - they probably ran into a conflict with the use of Alt- for menu bindings and decided to sod it. But that's no excuse for not offering Super-, or Wordstar-type Ctrl-AB combos... which again, is just me griping about OO.o.)
...
Anyhow, good luck with it- it's nuts, but I'm sure it'll find its niche.
Interested Party: The overall size is 110 x 68 x 42mm, which is smaller than most gaming mice. TThe overall size is 110 x 68 x 42mm, which is smaller than most gaming mice.he smallest buttons are 8mm by 8mm. On an HP calculator, the buttons are 8mm by 5mm.
KSabre: The joystick has a click/doubleclick as well as 4/8/16 directional keys depending upon the mode. So normally it's got six functions assigned to it, with a theoretical maximum of 18. However, 16-key mode is unusable for anything but directional movement. Even 8-key mode requires excellent dexterity to be practical.
Pascal Monett: I use it quite heavily in CoD:MW2 Domination. It's really nice to be able to reload, crouch, lie down, throw grenades or flash grenades, switch weapons, and use environmental objects without taking my fingers off WASD.
Is it the size of a boot? ;-)
Interesting reply.
Nevertheless, I wouldn't use your average calculator in a Quake deathmatch. My Logitech G7 is quite sufficient with its standard two top buttons and one more on the side.
What I would really like someone to do is a remake of the Microsoft Strategic Commander.
Look into it, I'm sure you'll see the benefits from the gamer side.
If you don't, contact me, I'll be happy to explain.
"sensibly arranged in two three-by-three grids of nine on either side of a clickable scroll wheel"
Not according to the picture. It has two grids of EIGHT buttons (those blue ones are double the size of the others).
Then the side button and the scroll click for 18. Not sure how the side joystick gets counted.
... for the QWERTY mouse.
Thanks for clearing that up (Anonymous WarMouse Representative), it clears up most of the issues.
Haha, i like blue buttons, that was a music/spinal tap (is it really music?) joke, dont worry.
Just to clear a few things up:
Techno: the DPI in the laser sensor ranges from 100 to 5600. How much more do you need?
Steve: the buttons really aren't that small. They're bigger than the buttons on the average calculator, let alone smartphone, and people seem to be able to use those without too much trouble.
Sarah: it has a joystick on the side. You can use it in five different modes; for example, in Arcade Mode it is analog and buttons B1-B7 (on the right side) all become joystick buttons. In Digital 8-key Mode, you can assign eight different keys, key combinations, or macros to eight different joystick directions.
A.Peon: You can clone L1/R1 on any button. You can also assign combos such as Alt-L1 to any button or double-click. We're considering adding chording capability; it shouldn't be difficult.
Alown: The Razer Naga is a different solution to the same problem. Having used it, we are quite confident that the Meta is a more effective solution since a) three fingers are more dextrous than one thumb, b) the joystick is the most effective use of the thumb, c) you can easily create Meta modes for any application or game. It takes about 10 minutes from start to finish to assign all the buttons and a monkey could do it.
2 things:
1- The idea sounds kinda interesting to me: I play my WOW healer mainly with keybinds to mouse buttons, and priests do have a smorgasbord of spells. I already have an 8-button mouse from Logitech, and I wish it had a few more buttons, better placed, and the software were better. I especially like the side joystick, but 18 buttons is probably too many.
2- Instead of a useless rant, why don't you actually test the thing to tell us if the buttons are indeed too numerous to be usable, how good the software is, and how good the thing feels ?
Barry says" They should just drop 7 buttons from it, make it 11. And make the blue buttons also black."
The blue buttons add visual cues to the clicking. IMO one colour is confusing... three or more colours is even more confusing... black and blue is perfect.
That said i'd never buy this. i can barely use the 3 buttons on my mouse.
Why did they go for 18 buttons? why not 14? 21? why 18?!?
If they wanted something really revolutionary they should have created a mouse with 7 scroll wheels, developed specifically for special needs.
http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-mice/razer-naga/
12 thumb buttons + 2 side + left right click + scroll click = 17 buttons.
Just wanted to say that. .
...OO.o not offering keybindings for "Alt-" combos in the most recent Ubuntu?
Seriously, between that, the inability to bind any of the Windows 'super' keys, and rearrangement of certain defaults (like sliding paragraphs up and down, nonbreaking spaces, etc), I'm losing my mind. But I did jump from Ubuntu 6.06 to 9.10 so I've skipped a lot of versions there.
...
That said, it's only semi-ridiculous. I still wouldn't buy one, but if you can bind the vast majority of the buttons to 'left click' and 'right click', the plethora lets you map the most ergonomic reach of your fat fingers to the one or two extra functions you'd actually want.
It'd probably be more fun to build in something like the 'datahand' dish-switches though, so a down-click would do the default but an 'up-click,' 'northwest-click' and 'northeast-click' could bind other things. At least, more ergonomic than most other attempts I've seen.
Also interesting, and almost-but-who-knows permitted by the ridiculous Warmouse design, would be the possibility of chording - normally every button could be left- or right-click normally, but shift with the 'rat' button and the weirder settings requiring you to exercise fine motor control could be exposed. Only problem is that they seem to have a targeting joystick where the rat button would be, and a less-convenient-for-hominids-of-standard-configuration extra button below that.
This could be a good product for gamers but there are waaaaaay too many buttons on it. Make it with 4 buttons up top (2 for each side) a clickable scrollwheel and keep the thumb joystick thingy on the side and you might have something.
what if you have fat-finger syndrome?
I can't believe it, they still don't have a small joystick
or a built in printer/scanner
that cord is to thin and fragile, sure it deserves a chain link tether
s'okay, i didn't take my coat off anyway
They should just make a mouse with a button and a speaker on the bottom. That was when the computer starts playing up and you start banging the mouse on the table it can scream and shout OWWWW!
That would be so satifying!
(c) 2009
I'm waiting for the Gillette Mach 19 Pro-Turbo mouse. It has one more button over this, for even more control over something or other.
They should just drop 7 buttons from it, make it 11. And make the blue buttons also black. And call it the Spinal Tap "But, this one goes to 11" none more black edition.
It looks like wordy from words and pictures, under the right pharmaceutical conditions...
It may work for stratergy type games but not for FPS gamers....don't think the DPI is upto much and I doubt it would be able to cope with many g's of acceleration
Unless that thing is four inches wide, there isn't a hope in hell I will be able to press a single button down on its own and not depress at least two others!
It's about a likely to work as asking me to write a message on a blackberry!
I'm going to wait for the 18-wheeler mouse.
Mercy sakes alive,
looks like we got us a convoy
With a thousand screamin' trucks
And eleven long-haired friends of Jesus
In a chartreusse microbus
Hey Sod Buster, listen
You wanna put that microbus in behind the suicide jockey?
Yeah, he's haulin' dynamite
He needs all the help that he can git
10-4 Pig-Pen fer sure, fer sure
And this one saves gamers getting cold hands, or have I misunderstood?
Another thought: I wonder if you can turn it into a Microwriter.