Comfortable Mouse

[magithighs]

I remember reading a post asking about a comfortable mouse and can't find it to respond. Hope the original poster sees this.

I too suffer from mouse-rot. Playing several hours (somtimes 8 str8) online was giving me the twitch finger/hand. I've recently purchased the wireless logitech tracman optical mouse. It's amazing. I can set my laptop on a ottoman and have the mouse on the big chair with me. Makes it easy to watch TV, and play several tables at the same time. Very comfortable and I would highly recommend it.

Cheers
Magi

[Wake up CALL]

Here you go Magi. Mouse Post

[magithighs]

[M2d]

As Tyler noted, the whale mouse is excellent. It's symmetrical, so it fits both hands, and is wide enough to hold without pinching. A word of caution, though. because there are thumb grooves bilaterally, the user's pinky finger can tend to slide down into the opposite side's groove and force the user to use an awkward motion. This led to a few cases of wrist pain that we saw at work (I work in EH&S, and ergonomics is one of our responsibilities). a simple, cheap fix is to use a clump of silly putty (the stuff that comes in an egg and picks up comicbook pictures works just fine) and fill in the groove by your pinky. this keeps the pinky on the same plane as the rest of your hand and eliminates the pinching problem.

much of the pain that comes from mousing is the result of small muscles doing the work that larger muscles could do. with standard mouses (that standard curved, rectangular thing that comes with your computer), this is the pinching required to hold the thing, as well as the wristy motion that most people use to move it.
trackballs are a good way to avoid the pinching problem, but many people are lazy and tend to start moving the ball with their fingers only or their wrist. this, again, is the problem of using small muscle groups. to avoid this (and the wrist/forearm pains that will likely follow), make a conscious effort to use big movements. think of your fingers and wrist as fused and immoble, and move the ball with your forearm (side to side) and shoulder (front and back), the larger muscle groups you're using here are better equiped to absorb the stress of these motions.

I guess I should have posted this in the original thread, but I missed that one.