Kensington Optical Elite mouse

...fill most users’ needs. The Kensington optical elite mouse is a good alternative to Apple’s home grown optical mouse.

Design
Most Mac users have now become sticklers for good looking hardware; this is thanks to Apple’s innovative designs. The first thing that anyone will notice about the optical mouse is its appearance; the sleek design of this unique mouse makes it look at home no matter what your computer is. The device is ...
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Overall
Kensington has been a major player in the Macintosh peripheral market from the very start of Macs. So therefore it isn’t a surprise to see them creating a very high quality mouse. Although there was a couple of problems with the mouse this does not take away from the fact that this is a very well-made mouse. The Optical Elite mouse is a functional, stylish and compatible mouse for any USB-equipped Macintosh. And for all ... more

It’s well known that Apple provides a high quality optical mouse with every desktop Mac they sell. Whether it is for home use or office use, this mouse will fill most users’ needs. The Kensington optical elite mouse is a good alternative to Apple’s home grown optical mouse.

Design
Most Mac users have now become sticklers for good looking hardware; this is thanks to Apple’s innovative designs. The first thing that anyone will notice about the optical mouse is its appearance; the sleek design of this unique mouse makes it look at home no matter what your computer is. The device is a blend of grey and blue, with a few translucent components add a bit of playfulness to the strikingly serious look.

Functionality
Normally with a computer peripheral that looks the part will not function very well. But unusually the optical elite does not fall victim to this. The optical mouse feature symmetrical button layout, so it’s suitable for left handed gamers as well as right handed gamers. It is slightly larger than usual mice, but fits great into an adult’s hand. There is a rubberised coating on the sides and lower back of the optical elite which makes it comfortable to grip and easy to use, this does help when playing games for a long period of time where your hand would start hurting, but the rubber prevents this. The mouse has five buttons, each of which is fully programmable. These buttons are as follows:-

1 & 2. The typical left and right clicking buttons.
3. A scroll wheel that can also serve as a button when pressed down
4 & 5. And two buttons on either side of the mouse
The top left and right mouse buttons provide great feedback when clicked and the scroll wheel is also very responsive. The fourth and fifth buttons on the upper left and upper right sides of the mouse have been very thoughtfully placed. They are easy to reach with your hand and are positioned in such a way that they are less likely (unlike other mice) to be accidentally pressed.

Mouseworks
This mouse comes with Kensington’s Mouseworks driver software, which is available for both Mac OS 8.5/9.2 as well as Mac OS X. There is a version of Mouseworks available for the classic Mac OS but it is an extremely mature utility. Mouseworks is more than simply a way to set scroll wheel sensitivity and mouse tracking speed, Mouseworks is very useful, it can be use to automate simple but repetitive tasks and provide general button customization on not only an application but on a system-wide level as well.

Responsiveness
The first optical mice that hit the market were often criticised by hardcore gamers, because they were not as responsive as their rolling ball counterparts. However Mouse tracking speed has greatly improved since the first optical mice came onto the market thanks to improved optical sensors and overall hardware design. The Optical Elite is generally very responsive, I even use it to play games such as Halo, Half-life and Unreal tournament, Obviously it still isn’t as good as using a decent rolling ball mouse, but it still a very good optical mouse there are in fact very few occasions were the mouse seemed unable to keep up and went off in its own direction, but these were few and far between. A very possible reason for this rare lack of responsiveness is probably to do with mouse cleaning. Yes that’s right mouse cleaning on an optical mouse, users of any optical mouse should keep in mind that some maintenance is a good idea. Since the Optical Elite is still gliding on a desk, there is friction between the bottom of the mouse and the top of the table. And after a few weeks of use, I noticed that there was some dust and grime starting to build up on the bottom of the mouse. This dirt can be quite easily removed by rubbing it off with your finger and after this, the mouse responded very near perfectly.

Overall
Kensington has been a major player in the Macintosh peripheral market from the very start of Macs. So therefore it isn’t a surprise to see them creating a very high quality mouse. Although there was a couple of problems with the mouse this does not take away from the fact that this is a very well-made mouse. The Optical Elite mouse is a functional, stylish and compatible mouse for any USB-equipped Macintosh. And for all you people who are interested it only costs 

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