[tylerdurden]

I was poking around at CompUSA today and noticed that the newer microsoft mice have a new wheel mechanism. Instead of the old wheels that "click" as you scroll, the new ones are completely smooth rolling. They also tilt side to side for scrolling left and right, which I could use (I do a lot with large spreadsheets for my "real" job).

Anyway, I was not sure if I'd really like it or not because of the smooth wheel action. I use firefox mostly, and I use the middle click a LOT to open links in new tabs. With my current MS mouse, the mouse often sends a wheel scroll event to the computer as I'm middle-clicking, even if the wheel doesn't quite move enough to "click" to the next wheel position (hard to explain, but If you've used one you probably know what I mean). It seems that a smooth-scrolling wheel would have even more issues like this. Microsoft doesn't really use the middle click for anything in their OS or applications, so they probably don't test very strenuously for this annoying behavior. Has anyone used one of these and had enough experience middle-clicking to tell me if it's a problem or not?