Mice

Rodent Guru : David Clow Blurb : Graeme Clark

Introduction

At Kustom PCs, we are regularly asked ‘which mat should I use with my new mouse’ and recently we discovered that some mats and mice did not work agreeably. So we decided to investigate further and create a compatability checklist so suitability can be checked before purchasing !

Furthermore, we knew we could help our customers by specifying further information about the mice while we had the opportunity, so we have updated our website stating dimensions of every mouse, cable lengths, button tactility and any other comments we felt relevant along the way.

Products Used

First up, our list of tested mice :
 

Apple Mighty Mouse	Creative Fatal1ty 1010	Keysonic Alu Warp Laser	Logitech MX-518	Logitech G5 *	Logitech G7 Cordless
Raptor Gaming M2	Razer Pro	Razer Diamondback	Razer Copperhead	X-Raider Mouse

* The Logitech G5 is tested with standard 1.0 Firmware and the latest 1.1 Firmware from Logitech.

And our ‘surfaces’. Note that not only did we test our range of performance mats, but we used a promotional laminated mouse mat (thank you Intel!), an issue of CustomPC magazine and on some jeans. While the last two may seem a little out of place, anyone attending a LAN Party will know how easy it is to forget a mouse mat and only have the option of a temporary ‘surface’ to continue playing on.
 

CyberSnipa Aluminium	Everglide Kustom	Everglide Titan	Icemat v1	Icemat 2nd Edition Black	Icemat 2nd Edition White
QPAD Gamer MidSense	Razer Mantis Speed	Razer Mantis Control	Razer Pro Solutions	Razer eXactMat	Steelpad S&S
Steelpad 4S Metal	Steelpad 4D Plastic	Steelpad 5L	xRaider Lighted

Plus...

Intel Promotional Mouse Mat
Jeans
Magazine

Testing

So how do we define what ‘works’ ? We tried every mouse and mat combination in Windows and Battlefield 2 and apart from the obvious ‘does it move’ test we performed the following :

• When the mouse goes to ‘sleep’ (eg the optical light dims) does it wake up right away when moved?
• Moving the mouse back and forth quickly, does it cause it to lose tracking?
• Does lifting the mouse slightly cause erratic behaviour? (Ideally you don’t want the pointer to jump when lifting the mouse)

• Measured height and length of mouse
• Button tactility (1 being soft, 5 being hard)
• Measured cable length
• Had a play around with the software to make sure it installed painlessly
• DPI range
• Number of buttons and if they are all reprogrammable

Green means everything was fine, red means there were problems affecting a particular combination and yellow is used to define a double-sided mat where only side worked with a particular mouse. Here are the results :



And now, for the first in our new run of wacky experiments. Well, it seemed a great idea, but we thought we would take the opportunity to do a survey at Gumpcom’s GL12 LAN event in Falkirk. The idea was that different hand sizes may prefer certain mouse types and that we could maybe find a pattern to recommend mice based on hand size. 34 people kindly volunteered to have their hands measured and state their mouse preference – almost like a visit to the shoe shop, but more fun. Here’s the results :



So, what conclusion can we draw from this? Well, the Keysonic Alu mouse is certainly not popular with our selection of gamers, but it is quite small and may be best considered a laptop mouse. The Logitech G5 (same moulding as the G7 and MX518) was considered the most popular shape by the majority.

Surprisingly, we did actually find some interesting results here in that users with smaller hands quite liked the Diamondback mouse and users with ‘medium’ sized hands found preference in the Copperhead model. Although the two Razer mice are similar, the Copperhead actually has a raised tail while the Diamondback has an arch that runs straight to the base. The Logitech mouse seemed to fit comfortably with all hand sizes with the exception of left-handed users who preferred the Razer mice.

For reference, if you wish to use this as a reference for mouse choice, we asked our entrants to place their hand flat on the desk and measured from the end of their middle finger to the end of the palm. Width was measured from the base of the thumb bone directly across the hand.

So there we go – some stuff you didn’t previously know about mice carefully researched by Kustom PCs. Click the above links to see our detailed specs on each mouse including new side profile photos !

Update 3rd May:

*Added The Everglide Titan and Icemat V1 mats. Also checked all mice with the QPAD Gate design, results the same as the AIM design.
*Added Creative Fatal1ty 1010 Mouse. Upgraded firmware on Logitech G5 to v1.1 which made a huge improvement in surface compatability.

*Competition*

On the 31st of May our competition to win a G7 mouse closed - congratulations to Nick Chalmers who has won himself a fine bit of rodent technology !