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My Microsoft Mouse review, plus some tips

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Here is a quick review of the Microsoft Mouse products I use. For about a year I used the IntelliMouse Explorer for Bluetooth, the original older model and not the latest model available. It has a great feel to it, very nice to use and comfortable. I owned two of them since I always like to use the exact same mouse at home as at work. While the Bluetooth connection worked fine with my notebook computer, I often had issues several times a week going from the work unit to home or vice versa. The Bluetooth settings would often forget the connection information and I would have to go into the Bluetooth settings dialog and reset them to re-establish a connection. While this only took about 60 seconds, doing it several times per week got a bit annoying. But I liked the feel of the mouse so much, I didn't let it bother me.

With the wireless Bluetooth mouse, the 2 AA batteries generally lasted about 2 to 3 months. I always use AA Energizer lithium e2 batteries which cost twice as much as typical AA alkaline batteries but they are much lighter and last 2 to 4 times longer in every case from my experience. Energizer recently came out with AAA lithium batteries too which I also started using for everything I own that uses AAA size.

So last week I decided to try out the new Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer optical mouse with much longer battery life, silk smooth scroll wheel rather than the older click type, and new tilt wheel to also scroll horizontally. The new wireless smart receiver works great, it is always is ready and works switching from my home to work mouse even if I turn on my new Toshiba M200 Tablet PC from standby mode. After only one day of full use, I went and bought a second unit for home and I've been enjoying the new mouse for the past 5 days or so, a great and noticeable upgrade.

Some useful tips for using this new mouse include clicking down on the scroll wheel to switch to the next open window application like Alt+TAB does. But clicking the scroll wheel again goes to the next window in the running application list rather than go back to the last one like pressing Alt+TAB would back and forth. The two buttons on the left side of the mouse default to be used in applications like Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer to go Back and Forward, which is much faster and easier than moving the mouse to the back button and then clicking.

Last week I also bought a new Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse for use in my computer bag as for having a mouse my notebook computer to meetings at work. The amazing small but comfortable mouse has a great feature, a snap-in USB receiver on the back of the mouse which makes it very portable and automatically turns off the mouse when the connector is attached. It uses only one AA battery.

A useful Outlook Ctrl+ScrollWheel tip for any mouse with a scroll wheel that has been around for years but not many people know about. When reading an email either open or using the preview window, place the mouse cursor position over the email body and then hold down the Ctrl key and scroll the mouse wheel up to decrease the size of the font and down to increase the size of the font. So if you ever open an email and want to read it in a larger font, simply hold down the Ctrl key and move the the mouse scroll wheel down a notch or two. This change will not persist in the Outlook email (not saved), just used for quick viewing. This also works in Outlook Express, but the setting does persist between emails so you may have to use Ctrl+ScrollWheel again to set it back later.

You can also use the Ctrl+ScrollWheel feature in Internet Explorer the same way, but note that it does change your Text Size font setting in the View menu and will persist when closing IE and opening new IE windows. A useful IE tip to avoid having to use the mouse is to hit the F6 key to jump to the address bar selecting the URL to immediately type over it rather than using the mouse to click and select all text to enter a new URL.