Introduction
The computer mouse is a practical and efficient companion to the keyboard. It offers a more natural way of navigating around a GUI (Graphical User Interface) operating system. But even with innovations like the optical sensor and cordless operations, today’s mouse still relies on moving around on a flat surface, the same way the first mouse did nearly four decades ago. It’s only a matter of time before someone comes and completely re-invents the mouse. That someone happens to be a company called Gyration.
Gyration is a company that makes computer input devices for business and consumer markets. Founded in 1990, Gyration utilizes their patented gyroscope to deliver a whole new way of interacting with the computer. Their latest offering is the Gyration Ultra Cordless Optical Mouse. In addition to operating like any other mouse, the Gyration Ultra Mouse can be lifted into the air, moved left, right, up, or down results with the pointer on the screen doing the same thing.
Appearance
At first glance, the Gyration Ultra Mouse is quite small. It’s about half the size of the Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer. From a top-down view, the Gyration mouse has a standard mouse setup: two buttons and a scroll wheel. The left and right mouse buttons are gigantic, measuring at a little more than ½ the length of the mouse. The mouse also has a green LED light in the center that lights up when the mouse is in use. Turning the mouse over, there are three more buttons: the gyroscopic on/off trigger, the teach button, and the channel button. Unlike most mice that have a flat bottom side, the Gyration mouse has a groove on the bottom for the index finger to fit comfortably when using the mouse’s gyroscope.
The base station of the Gyration Ultra Mouse strangely resembles a WiFi router. It has a foldable antenna and has a status light and a conflict light in the front panel, in addition to keyboard lights (num lock, caps lock, and scroll lock). The keyboard lights are for the keyboard that is sold in the Gyration Ultra Cordless Optical Suite. Surprisingly, the lights work just as well for most wireless keyboards because they do not have LED in hopes to conserve battery life.
Setup
Setting up the Gyration Ultra Mouse is as easy as pie. The mouse itself doesn’t come with its own driver, because it doesn’t need to. It uses Windows standard mouse drivers. Just plug it into a USB port and wait a minute or two for the installation to complete, and the mouse is operational. I didn’t even have to reboot the system. I did not have to adjust the radio frequency settings between the mouse and its base station, but I did it anyway to see how much longer it would add to the extremely short setup time. It only added a mere seconds. So, the total setup time, even if you have to setup the radio frequency, should be less than 5 minutes.
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