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Fastest twitch mouse in the world

At Siggraph, we discovered a 3D mouse from Sandio Technology and have been playing with it for the last couple of months. There are three joy-sticks built into the mouse, one on either side (where your thumb and ring finger hold the mouse), and one on top in front of the wheel. That gives you a total of 12 movements, plus the wheel and the conventional left-right mouse buttons—that’s a lot of control, you can see two of the joy-sticks, which have a blue light behind them, in the following photo.

Table 2: Benchmarks/dollar for the various AIBs. (Source: Jon Peddie Research)

There have been numerous attempts at building a six-axis mouse or similar stationary pointing device, and all of them have left something to be desired and required the user to learn a new skill, and the Sandio is no different.

Mastering the mouse’s variety of controls was difficult enough, but the library of games it works with didn’t seem to work either. It took a while and some trial and error to figure out how to upload the drivers for various games. However, the list of games is large and covers most popular FPSs, as well as several RPGs.

The initial mappings to the joysticks are usually left-right, forward backwards, crouch, etc. Obviously, you can remap them in a game setup menu, once you’ve loaded the drivers and gotten the game’s attention.

The mouse itself if a little larger than a conventional mouse, as shown in the following photo.

The larger size isn’t noticeable and actually makes handling the joysticks easier.

Table 2: Benchmarks/dollar for the various AIBs. (Source: Jon Peddie Research)

FAST—killer fast! The mouse is fast. Like the Mystify, it’s super-high-resolution, in fact, the highest—2000 DPI. If you’ve got the twitching skills, can get the mapping you like, and can train yourself to use the joysticks, this is the killer mouse for FSPs.

The mouse sells for $79.99 and you can buy one at http://www.sandiotech.com/sandio_spec.html

The company has also put some effort into matching it up with SketchUp, and a couple of CAD programs, so it’s not just all fun and games.

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