40 Days of Tips, Tricks, and Links: Day 9

Several of my posts this past week have been computer-related, so I figured I would continue that trend today. Computers have three things that you interact with constantly: a screen, a keyboard, and a mouse. When I started grad school, I invested in a mouse that was way beyond what I had ever used before. Like most of you, I had a very simple mouse: two buttons and a scroll wheel. These types of mice work great for basic stuff and you all probably get along just fine without a fancy-shmancy mouse. But believe me, when you go from a crappy mouse to one that has increased functionality, you’ll be amazed at how much you enjoy and appreciate the extras.

In addition to the traditional two buttons and scroll wheel, the Logitech MX Revolution mouse that I use has an additional scroll wheel, at least 3 extra buttons, and both scroll wheels are capable of clicking and rocking side to side. This sounds like a ridiculous amount of features, but it allows me to trigger specific actions on my computer that would otherwise take several mouse clicks. For example, the main wheel always me to scroll up and down as well as side-to-side, I can navigate between pages on my web browser with two additional buttons, and I can activate system-wide features like Expose and my Dashboard using the features of the second scroll wheel. This mouse is also ten times more comfortable to use than a regular mouse because it more naturally contours to they shape of a human hand. All of these extras have really come in handy and using them is second nature to me. I say all of this to impress upon you the benefits of a really good mouse. It may not seem like something you really need, but once you use it you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

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