At the recent OpenOffice.org conference, developers unveiled the “OpenOffice.Org” Mouse, an eighteen-button (+analog joystick) monster that makes it a breeze to fly through the context menus of OpenOffice, or play your favourite strategy game.
Why was this designed?
This mouse was thought of by a gamer who realised that all gaming mice were designed only for FPS games.
No mouse was designed to be useful in a MMO or RTS game, and having just two or three buttons did nothing to make it easier to navigate through the dozens of pull-down menus to activate various actions and spells.
Thus, the OOo mouse was born.
Where will I find use for it?
Even though it’s called an OpenOffice mouse, OpenOffice is not the only application that supports it.
The OOo mouse has built-in profiles to work seamlessly with
- OpenOffice.org 3.1: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Base
- Microsoft Office 2007: Word, Excel, Powerpoint
- Microsoft Outlook
- Microsoft Internet Explorer
- Adobe Photoshop
- Autodesk AutoCAD
- 3D Studio Max
- Intuit Quickbooks
- Intuit Quicken
- Mozilla Firefox
- Mozilla Thunderbird
- The Gimp
Boring, only office applications?
No way. The designer is a gamer, remember? The mouse has profiles for these games by default:
- World of Warcraft
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
- Call of Duty: World at War
- Counterstrike: Source
- Unreal Tournament 3
- Poker Stars
- The Sims 3
- Starcraft
- Battle for Wesnoth
- OOmouse Intellivision Emulator
List too small for you? Well, the mouse and it’s accompanying software is Open Source. And that means people can write maps for games and applications, and you can just download them on to your mouse!
What’s more, you can configure the mouse buttons yourself – with the free (and Open Source) software included with it.
Cross Platform
This mouse and it’s software will run on your Linux, Mac and your Windows box without hassle.
Now is the time for all you Mac users to throw away that silly Magic Mouse 
What else?
The mouse has:
- 18 programmable buttons – 16 on top, 2 by the side – all with double click functionality
- A scroll wheel
- An analog joystick!!
- 512KB of memory
- Resolution adjustable from 400 to 1600 CPI
- 63 built-in application profiles
- Option to export the current profile as PDF (to print it and use as reference)
The joystick can double up as a keyboard, with upto 16 command modes.
Imagine having a button that when clicked will pop up your browser, and when double clicked will hide it away. And imagine having 18 such buttons and a joystick to boot.
This mouse is expected to retail at no more than $74.99. Visit the website for more info.
How many of you fancy having this monster?
Popularity: 1% [?]
Hi!, If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Hi, My name is Narayanan and i'm your resident blogger. Technology and internet have always fascinated me and that's the reason behind the origin of this blog. Thanks for visiting Tech Spikes :)