5 buttons? Wireless? *kabloom*

The computer mouse is one of the worst human-computer interaction devices ever invented and I hope it dies a rapid death.

Every year or so I explode with fury at the absolute inadequacy of the mouse. It forces my hand to adpot some permanently cramped expression of agony only emulated in the natural world when you fall into a pit of lava and your outstretched arm is the last thing to be consumed by the all-devouring magma.

Not only that but it forces me to stretch out for it, my arms sitting as far apart from one another as if they were being held back by heavies as I’m eviscerated for not paying my loan shark in time.

Even then, I have to move my hand in ever smaller amounts, trying to pinpoint tiny little places on a screen where clicking one of the buttons underneath my fingers will actually perform some action. This never happens anywhere else in real life: it’s freaky and unnatural.

It’s absolute rubbish.

My anger has only built since I got my tablet PC, Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii. The Wii in particular has a pointing and navigation device which is at somewhere near what I might normally do; you know: up, down, left, right, select an item. These things aren’t that tough. I promise you I don’t need five buttons on my mouse.

I would guess that most of my time in front of a computer is spent either writing code or reading web pages. When I’m writing code I’m almost permanently using the keyboard. I can understand why this is. When I’m reading, why force me to hover inanely over my keyboard and mouse so that I can scroll up and down the page or move between links? Why not let me sit back with a little wireless widget which lets me just scroll up and down? Or give me a keyboard which dual-functions as a touchpad, or anything, something, just let me throw my mouse away and never suffer it again.

So here, yet again, begins my annual attempt to do without a mouse for as long as I can. My desktop aggregator, BlogBridge, has already proved itself a loser (because you can’t open links in posts in a browser window without the mouse). Ubuntu at home would be a lot easier if the Deskbar history ordered items by which one I run most often. More comments like this to come, I rather suspect.