Alternative mice

[sluggobear]

Anyone have any "hands-on" experience with alternative mice?

Been having some strain on my thumb.  So far I've been using a Futuro Thumb Stabilizer, which helps a bit.

I've been looking at the 3M Renaissance, SmartCat Glidepoint, Quill, GoldTouch, Contour PMOXLR XL, Contour Design and maybe even SmartNav.

I tried the Humanscale Whale mouse, but couldn

Comments

[cpratt]

Don't laugh, but the best solution for me was not to use a mouse unless absolutely necessary (i.e. know and love your keyboard shortcuts for everything).

[sluggobear]

Actually that's good advice. I know a lot of the common Windows shortcuts, but I don't know many of the Office and Firefox shortcuts... I will read up on them!

[cpratt]

Most of what you know about Windows in general can be extended; Tab is generally your friend, and pushing the spacebar "actions" lots of things (e.g. buttons in Firefox - to post this comment I'll do tab-space to move to the Post comment button and depress it). Similarly, use the Alt key a lot to get to menu items (accelerators are easy), and so on. You'll definitely need a mouse every so often, but the less, the (likely) better (in terms of RSI). Good luck!

[sluggobear]

Thanks much. (What's an accelerator? Is that the underlined character you can type to get to the menu?)

[mrpandabehr]

I don't know if you purchased any of these yet, but the 3M Renaissance Mouse is available at Buy.com for $45; instead of, $60 everywhere else. Plus you can get $10 off if you use Google Checkout and the shipping is free.