Magnetic Mouse!

My new mouse, the A4Tech NB-57D, is a battery-less mouse which gets power from magnetic induction generated by the magnetic fields of the mousepad!

I have always loved A4Tech for their very innovative ideas, like one of my beloved wireless mice from way before – to charge it, you’d just plug the USB charger into the head of the mouse (in effect, making it a wired mouse.) The thing that was different though, was that the plug was a standard classic Nokia charger plug! So, I could charge my Nokia when not charging my mouse… and, the mouse took rechargeable AAA batteries, so it was also a USB AAA battery charger!

Such genius, and yet they discontinued it (possibly Nokia sued?) so their later mice were all charged by docking, which is a very stupid place for a mouse to be in.

I had seen this magnetic-field powered mouse before years ago, but it had a label that said not to bring it within a certain distance of CRT monitors to prevent interference. I still use a 21″ IBM 6558 P202 for its superb color and gamma (I dislike the unnatural gamma of LCD monitors.)

And so, when my current mouse could not middle-click consistently, it was time to get a new one.

When I saw the box, it didn’t have any indication that it was incompatible with CRT monitors. Was this a new packaging where they assumed that CRTs went extinct? But then, the packaging said it was compatible with Windows XP and below. There was no sign of Windows Vista. So it could be old enough to exist before Windows Vista while having fixed the problems with CRT monitors.

Oh well, a gamble it was then.

So did it interfere? Yes it did, causing tiny black lines which disappeared after I removed the mousepad from the surface of the screen. So it wasn’t a problem at all.

And how about the mouse? It was smooooth! The mousepad had a very nice texture with a slightly slippery feel. I played a Tier of Quake 3 and it didn’t let me down at all.

(This is not a sponsored post – I am honestly marvelled by A4Tech’s innovations.)

Oh and how many of you can name the good use of a middle-click? Yes, you can click down on your scroll wheel!

I asked around, and the most popular response, was of course, to make an auto-scroller. (There was also a very sad person who did not know you could middle-click.)

However, about nobody knew that middle-clicking on a link in Internet Explorer 7/8 or Firefox would open the link in a new tab. There you go you’ve learnt something new today!

Why was this a big deal? I was middle-clicking on links in emails using my previous mouse, not realizing it wasn’t working, and then deleting those emails…

10 thoughts on “Magnetic Mouse!

  1. KJ Post author

    oh! kewl! i wan one of those for a long time too! bah! my uncle have one of these magnetic mouse pads.. awesome stuffs.. how many DPI can it go ah?

    Reply
  2. zaque Post author

    Great mouse makes me wanna get one too…thx for introducing. Btw this post somehow hv some power of irony within it. LOL

    Reply
  3. flysheep Post author

    gotta try A4tech product. I broke a Blaze mouse with consistent middle clicking for "paste" function in Linux machine. It’s convenient, faster than Ctrl-c and v. You need only draggin mouse cursor for highlighting text and middle click at where u want to paste.

    Reply
  4. Albert Ng Post author

    KJ: It was a 800 DPI mouse.

    zaque: I’m not sure if I get the irony.

    J: Your response did invoke a poll!

    Silencers: I would but it’s too close to slipping the roller and changing weapons so I don’t. It’s kinda out of the way sometimes in games.

    Bowdacious B: Yeah man!

    flysheep: Whoa, and I thought Macs had all the shortcuts…

    ShaolinTiger: LOL tell me about it!

    Reply
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