I will be the first to criticize Microsoft when they add onto bloatware, release software which is not yet ready for market, and on and on......and yet I will also give credit where credit is due. The Microsoft Optical Mouse 3000 is an excellent product and a great value.
The Microsoft Optical Mouse 3000 is simply a well designed mouse and dollar for dollar, it is very hard to beat. Initially, I went to the office supply store to find a cheap optical mouse as mine kept on getting jammed with crud.....I had seen some optical mice advertised as low as $6.95. But once you see them in person, and feel them in your hands, you soon realize exactly **why** they are only $6.95. The 3000 feels nice in your hand, and has features built in for this price range which are, quite frankly, surprising. One is the 5X zoom feature- keep your hand on the mouse and click a button on the side and voila! Instant 5x magnification of a small area around the cursor. Very nice. You will probably not always use it, but it is a nice function to have at hand. Another very nice feature(which you most likely will use) is the lateral scroll with the wheel. No more clicking and dragging on the elevator to move left and right.....simply push the wheel left and right, and you will scroll in that same direction.
Again, Microsoft has its shortcomings and I will be the first to say so. But I will also give credit where credit is due.....and for the money, this mouse cannot be beat. Buy it. Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000
Like many people I tend to use the middle button quite a lot to open new tabs in my web browser. If you are one of these people, look elsewhere, because the Comfort Optical Mouse 3000 is awful.
It takes quite a bit of effort to actually depress the mousewheel, and when you do, it doesn't always register as a mouseclick (despite a fairly audible sound when you do so). I don't know if it's a driver issue or a hardware issue but it sporadically happens with every Comfort Optical 3000 on every PC in our company. Other Microsoft mice on the same PCs using the same drivers work fine.
I miss my old "Dove soap bar" Microsoft Mouse 2.0. That said, this mouse is the latest in a long line of good, basic, classic mice. It is the symmetrical design that, well, I prefer, and it has the benefit of having a larger scroll wheel than some of the newer pointing devices on the market. Unlike previous MS mice, this wheel does not have "click gradations," so you may have to get used to the "free" scrolling action.
But overall, the size is good for an average man's hand, the buttons large with positive feedback, and the click action of the scroll wheel is near effortless. Both vertical and new, horizontal scrolling is handy in some larger applications. It makes scrolling in Excel on both axes (up/down, left/right) PARTICULARLY convenient.
The addition of the third, thumb button can be used for any number of very useful functions, programmed with the IntelliPoint software. The long list includes a magnifying pane, double-clicking, page navigation in Explorer and Internet browsers, Show/hide desktop, and a rather interesting "Gaming toggle" to which you can program two sets of keystrokes. It can also be clicked to boost precision, to exert extra-fine control of your cursor movement; users of Photoshop, Windows Movie Maker and large screen resolutions (1600x1200 and up) will really appreciate this toggle.
If you're looking for a simple, affordable mouse for your desktop, or to travel with your laptop, it's hard to find as good a mouse, at as affordable a price. Last bonus: it looks nice, not garish.
In March 2005 I bought an Apple G5 and nearly two years later the only thing I can say that was cheap about it was the mouse: no right-click and the clicking for cutting and pasting on my website stopped working. Additionally, it started to make a creaking sound, another sign of cheapness.I didn't want to spend 50 bucks on the "Mighty Mouse" so I took a chance on the Microsoft 3000 at half the price. Following the instructions, I did not put the Microsoft 3000 mouse into my USB port until AFTER I downloaded the included software, which took 5 minutes or so. The results have been excellent. More mouse comfort, easier gliding motion, right click function, magnification function. The 3000 has proven to be a more than worthy upgrade for my iMac G5.
The middle button (mouse wheel) needs to be clicked just so to get the click to register. The click is incredibly heavy. Operating the wheel tilt feature requires so much force, it's almost unusable. This is a repetitive strain injury waiting to happen.
Occasionally, while performing click-and-drag operations, the mouse will "unclick" before the button mechanically "unclicks". This makes dragging files around very exciting. Who knows what folder they will wind up in!? I had the same problem (worse, actually) with a Microsoft Explorer Mouse I tried a month ago.
This mouse does not work on my desktop (other optical mice work fine), and *requires* a mouse pad. I haven't seen that problem since the laser mice from the 1980's!
Do not buy.
When my previous mouse started to give me problems, I chose this mouse.
It is simple to use, with very smooth operation.Like its name, it is comfortable to use too. The controls are simple.
I also like the look of it, I was looking at a very flashy red model, then decided on this one instead, as it's very reasonably priced.
I am very happy with it and would recommend it to anyone replacing their mouse.
One of the buttons on my mouse stopped working recently, so I needed to get a new one. I didn't have any particular mouse in mind for my purchase. I just wanted a basic working mouse. The reviews on this mouse were pretty good, so I bought it in spite of a few bad reviews that concerned me. I should have listened to the bad reviews. I'm a computer engineer and I spend all day on the computer, so the mouse matters a lot although normally the standard Dell or Logitech mouse does just fine.
The scroll wheel, ahh that scroll wheel. You don't realize how important the scroll wheel is until it doesn't work correctly. The scroll wheel is extremely hard to turn on this mouse causing my brain to trigger a "there's something wrong here" reaction every time I turn it. I have probably 5 different mice in my office, since I have a lot of computers and I can use any of them without really noticing much of a difference, but this one is grating. It feels like someone has their foot on the brake while you're trying to make it move forward. It's so annoying, that I'm considering taking it apart to try to find out what is causing such a high level of friction when turning the mouse wheel or just outright throwing it in the trash. What a waste of a good mouse. Everything else seems to work fine besides this unforgivable flaw. - Ergonomic - Microsoft - Comfortable - Usb'
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