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I'm afraid both of these are electronic, but I use them a great deal, and they're quite special to me.
Firstly, the Microsoft Wireless Optical Notebook Mouse:
To explain. It's tiny - easily hidden by my whole hand. It's held between thumb and fourth finger (by me), but because it's so arched, the mouse still manages to support the rest of my hand. So it's small, but very comfy - unlike, say, the old iMac hockey puck mouse.
It's optical. Nice and precise, whatever the surface. And here's the great bit: it's wireless. Radio-frequency, not Bluetooth, which keeps costs down. This of course, means it needs a receiver. That's the thing with the USB socket you can see in the picture.
What makes this product brilliant is this simple fact: the receiver clips into the bottom of the mouse for when you're not using it. Unplug it, clip it together, off you go. Pull mouse out of bag, pull out receiver from single compact unit, off you go. Even better, there's a tiny microswitch in the socket for the receiver - so the moment you snap it in place, the laser in the mouse turns itself off. Saves you battery power. Un-snap it, and the mouse turns on.
I paid £23 for it from Amazon, and for someone whose main computer is a laptop, it's a godsend. Cheap, wireless, brilliantly designed. The receiver also has a hinge so that you can fit other cables around it. Recommended.
Secondly, the Nintendo Wavebird:
The Nintendo Gamecube controller is a beautiful device. It's asymetric, tacticle; the triggers have huge long pulls, and then a click at the end. The yellow "C-stick" is grippy rubber; the analogue stick plastic. And look at how the buttons are explained intuitively. The A-buttons is the most important, the B-button the second-most important. Then X and Y - what you can't see is that the X and Y buttons rise away from the centre of the A-button, so you can push them at the same time; Y with a stretch of the thumb, X with a roll of it.
The Wavebird, though, takes the standard controller and cuts the cord. It replaces it with a radio-frequency wireless link. Because it's battery powered - 2 AAs - the pad no longer rumbles, but that's a small price to pay for the freedom.
Even if the normal cord comfortably reaches your sofa, nothing beats a Wavebird. You can wander around the room with it, if necessary; hand it to a friend without juggling cables; put it down anywhere in the room, if only for a second. It's a weird thing to describe, but it's a huge leap from corded controllers. It's also brilliantly engineered - the batteries last for ages. I'm so pleased that next-gen consoles will have wireless controllers as standard. The Xbox 360 one is rechargable from the base unit, which means it can rumble and be cordless. Great stuff. |
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