Toshiba Optical Scroller Mouse - mouse

Ok, so a mouse might be a bit hard to do a lenghty review on, but i will try and cover all aspects of this product.

Firstly the packaging is neat and tidy, although i have seen it packed in two different ways, one boxed and the way i bought mine was a plastic bubble sealed pack, inside i found the mouse a short manual and an adaptor, aswell as a driver cd.

The adaptor is to change the lead on the mouse from a USB plug ...
...so any PC user can pick this up and be assured that it will work, as all PC'c have one connection if not both, i opted for the USB as i wanted to connect without an adaptor fitted.

Ok so i connected the mouse to my PC and booted up, Windows XP immediately installed the device on my behalf and away i went, couldn't be simpler really, i installed the drivers disk included which i believe gave me the extra support for the side buttons. ... more

Ok, so a mouse might be a bit hard to do a lenghty review on, but i will try and cover all aspects of this product.

Firstly the packaging is neat and tidy, although i have seen it packed in two different ways, one boxed and the way i bought mine was a plastic bubble sealed pack, inside i found the mouse a short manual and an adaptor, aswell as a driver cd.

The adaptor is to change the lead on the mouse from a USB plug and play device to the PS/2 connection, presumably this is so any PC user can pick this up and be assured that it will work, as all PC'c have one connection if not both, i opted for the USB as i wanted to connect without an adaptor fitted.

Ok so i connected the mouse to my PC and booted up, Windows XP immediately installed the device on my behalf and away i went, couldn't be simpler really, i installed the drivers disk included which i believe gave me the extra support for the side buttons. Although it seems this mouse works if you install the driver cd or not, the cd i think is mainly for users how have lesser versions of mindow, ie 98 onwards.

The mouse feels comfortable to use and sits in the hand very snuggly, it has quite a raised back, which proves invaluable to me as i have larger hands and have found using 'mini' mice can cause wrist ache. But this mouse i can use comfortably for hours on end without worrying about suffering pains later on.

The buttons on the top, front of this mouse are typically well placed and provide a satisfying click when pressed, some mice are clunky almost making it an effort to use at times, but this mouse feels great where thats concerned. In between the two main buttons you will find a scroller wheel, this it designed to reduce your mouse and hand movements and save time, this works by simply rolling the wheel up or down to read documents or to view webpages. This Is an invaluable function, if you dont already own a mouse with a scrool wheel get one it alows so much more flexible control and quick reference to the documents you view and manipulate, and for the £14.99 i paid i would expect to be included regardless. Please note the price seems to have dropped by a few pound since i made my purchase at PC world a few months ago.

The buttons to the side of the mouse are configurable, but i leave them set as convienient Forward and Back buttons for my Webpage browser. Even though they are useful, i dont use them, somehow the clicking of these feels awkward as my fingers dont typically rest where they are located. Others use may find they are great but for me, something i would rather go without. And a couple of times i have pressed them accidently, which just frustates me when trying to read a website, this has only happened around two times though.

Then the main selling point of this product i think, the optical sensor, now i've had alot of mice, some trackball, some optical but it seems for optical the industry standard is 800Dpi, which too is the resolution for this mouse. Basically without getting all technical the higher the Dpi eg.400 or 800 the more responsive the mouse will be, you will notice smoother scrolling, more accuracy and better stability across a wider variety of surfaces. As i mentioned this has 800Dpi, which is fine although this resolution seems to be no good on my desk's surface, and the pointer often does not respond or shoots wildly in the wrong direction. This is corrected by using a mousemat, but for me the point of an optical mouse is greatly to do with not having to have a mat on the desk.

General use of this mouse provides good overall performance but if using to play games (which i do, and have upgraded) then at least 1200Dpi would be what i recommend. A nice looking mouse, if a little standard and you may find many mice to be of better quality and offer more features for the same price, therefore i find it difficult to reccomend it.

The instruction manual is clear and consise just as you should expect from a electrical giant such as Toshiba. 

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