What do i look for while buying a mouse

hidmouse

I'm doing a bit of research about mice, with the view of getting a new one. There's quite a few things that are obvious (for example, i wouldn't get a ball mouse) but there's a few things that baffle me.

I notice most mice seem to be graded by DPI (though wikipedia says cpi is more accurate) and that mice have switchable DPI – what would be the advantage/disadvantages of high and low DPI mice? Which would be better for precision work, gaming, or use with fairly limited desk space (well for the last, trackballs), but you get the idea.

I also notice that some logitech mice seem to have adjustable weight – what would be the practical advantage of a heavier mouse?

lastly, while i'm planning on getting a wired mouse, if i was getting a wireless mouse what technologies should i be looking at? i notice some systems use bluetooth, and others use other technology. Is there any practical difference between them?

EDIT:

One more thing i just noticed – what would be the difference between an optical, laser and infrared based sensor?

Best Answer

DPI. This refers to the amount of movement in the mouse that corresponds to an amount of movement in the cursor or whatever is being controlled by the mouse. This is useful for different applications, but commonly used in games, where you may want fast movement for run-and-gun and slow movement for sniping, where you want fine control. So a lower DPI means more mouse movement for a given movement on screen. It could be useful on a small desk, but try it first, as a higher DPI means a finer level of control is required. This can become tiring for normal work.
Weight. This is about choice more than anything. The differences in inertia due to different masses in the mouse means a different level of force required for it to move. Again, this can help when doing fine control stuff, as you don't want the mouse skittering around when doing pixel level activities - so a heavier mouse could help. Very subjective.
Wireless mice come in two main flavours, 2.6ghz and bluetooth. Both require batteries or charging from time to time. Bluetooth is sometimes preferred with laptops if it already supports bluetooth, so you don't need to sacrifice a usb port for a mouse usb dongle. Otherwise there isn't much benefit in bluetooth imo.

Related Solutions

Windows – How to prevent mouse settings from resetting after reboot

Mysteriously, the latest Windows updates seems to have resolved this problem. This now seems to work with no issues.

Windows – How to reverse mouse movement (X & Y axis) system-wide? (Win 7 x64)

Couldn't find anything online, and I figured this shouldn't be too hard to make, so I went ahead and built one myself. Requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 in order to run.

Polynomial's Mouse Inverter (freeware, under CC-BY-NC-SA license) - (Alt Link)

Let me know how it works out for you :)

Sorry this took so long, but here's the code that actually does the inversion:

internal class Inverter
{
    private Point pos = Cursor.Position;

    private bool invertX;

    private bool invertY;

    private bool running;

    private bool exit;

    public bool InvertX
    {
        get
        {
            return this.invertX;
        }
        set
        {
            this.invertX = value;
            if (this.InvertSettingsChanged != null)
            {
                this.InvertSettingsChanged(this, new EventArgs());
            }
        }
    }

    public bool InvertY
    {
        get
        {
            return this.invertY;
        }
        set
        {
            this.invertY = value;
            if (this.InvertSettingsChanged != null)
            {
                this.InvertSettingsChanged(this, new EventArgs());
            }
        }
    }

    public bool Running
    {
        get
        {
            return this.running;
        }
    }

    public Inverter(bool x, bool y)
    {
        this.invertX = x;
        this.invertY = y;
        this.pos = Cursor.Position;
    }

    private void MouseLoop()
    {
        Thread.CurrentThread.IsBackground = true;
        Thread.CurrentThread.Priority = ThreadPriority.Highest;
        while (!this.exit)
        {
            Point position = Cursor.Position;
            int right = (this.invertX ? this.pos.X - (position.X - this.pos.X) : position.X);
            if (this.invertX)
            {
                if (right < 2)
                {
                    right = 2;
                }
                if (right > Screen.FromPoint(position).Bounds.Right - 2)
                {
                    Rectangle bounds = Screen.FromPoint(position).Bounds;
                    right = bounds.Right - 2;
                }
            }
            int bottom = (this.invertY ? this.pos.Y - (position.Y - this.pos.Y) : position.Y);
            if (this.invertY)
            {
                if (bottom < 2)
                {
                    bottom = 2;
                }
                if (bottom > Screen.FromPoint(position).Bounds.Bottom - 2)
                {
                    Rectangle rectangle = Screen.FromPoint(position).Bounds;
                    bottom = rectangle.Bottom - 2;
                }
            }
            Cursor.Position = new Point(right, bottom);
            this.pos = Cursor.Position;
            Thread.Sleep(1);
        }
        this.exit = false;
    }

    public void Start()
    {
        this.pos = Cursor.Position;
        this.running = true;
        (new Thread(new ThreadStart(this.MouseLoop))).Start();
    }

    public void Stop()
    {
        this.running = false;
        this.exit = true;
    }

    public event EventHandler InvertSettingsChanged;
}

I just pulled this out of the executable with Telerik JustDecompile, because I don't have the original code. You can extract an entire VS project with JD if you need the full application code.

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