Logitech, Microsoft and Kensington all make excellent quality 3 button laser mice with scroll wheels.
Are you a power mouse user ?
Sadly, if you are using any standard Apple mouse - the answer is a big, fat resounding NO ! Sometimes simpler isn't better.
In my opinion (or IMHO, using computer speak), Apple's mouse design is one area where Windows users are way ahead. The use of 2 (or more) buttons and scroll wheels are excellent productivity aids. However, while Apple has moved to laser sensing (good move), they persist in staying with very short mouse cables and a single button.
For those who had one of the original flat, round mice that shipped with the original iMacs and the Blue and Whilte G3 towers, all readers pls bow their heads and silently express your sorrow for these martyrs to Apple's poor industrial design with 1 minutes silence. Finished? Trying to work out which way the mouse was oriented made what should have been a completely automatic operation into a frustrating and reoccurring task.
Laser & Multi-button mice
Logitech, Microsoft and Kensington all make excellent quality
3 button laser mice with scroll wheels.
Logitech mouse
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm?page=products/productlist&CRID=19&countryid=19&languageid=1
Microsoft mouse
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouse/
Kensington mouse
http://www.kensington.com/html/1420.html
What do you need a 3 button mouse for? Basically they do more and increase your productivity over a single button mouse.
Button
1 (left button)
The left button does what it has always done, click once to select,
double click to open, click and drag to move, etc.
Button
2 (right button)
Control click. To get to this menu with a single button mouse
you have to hold the control button down while clicking. With
a 2nd button this becomes a much quicker operation. I use this
all the time to get info on items, delete without having to drag
to the trash and it is especially useful when used with multiple
items. See the example below.
Button
3 (the mouse scroll wheel)
Scrolling. You cant scroll via the mouse with Apple's standard
mice at all. With a mouse equipped with a scroll wheel, however,
simply rotate the wheel and zoom up and down a document or web
page with ease. This wheel is actually the 3rd button as well.
Holding it down and rotating the wheel scrolls you up and down
a page at a time with every click on the wheel.
Some mice come with 4, 5 or even more buttons. This enables you to allocate even more functions to these buttons. Not as useful IMHO.
All 3rd party mice come supplied with software
that enables you to do things like :
- configure the mouse speed
- adjust the movement sensitivity curves
- adjust double click delay speed
- change any assigned button functions (if you don't like the
defaults)
- auto move the cursor to the default button in dialog boxes (excellent
feature once you get used to it)
As mice have been know to fail this enables you to have your old (original) mouse as a spare. Especially useful if you have many Macs. If you have an older Mac without a USB port then you are out of luck.
Laser mice work much better than the older style of mice with the ball inside. Laser mice still have their limitations on glass, mirrored or some shiny surfaces, but overall are a great improvement over the older type. You may have noticed that the cursor jumps around sometimes. This is generally because of the pattern of the mouse mat. Use a plain colour (no pattern) mouse mat or you may even find that your spiffy laser mouse doesn't need a mat at all. They also very rarely need cleaning. Although the teflon pads on the bottom sometimes need the grime scrapped off if it builds up too much, but this is pretty rare. Make sure that nothing obscures the laser hole either !