Saturday, March 2, 2013

Carpal tunnel syndrome, or how to reduce weight of computer mouse

By the nature of my occupation (I'm a programmer) I use mouse and keyboard quite heavily. I'm no stranger to wrist and arm aches.

A while ago I noticed that the pain is often related to mouse weight. The heavier a mouse is, the sooner I get wrist pain.

Now, after I got my laptop fixed with the internal bluetooth module, I naturally decided to refresh my quite a big collection of keyboards and mice with something bluetooth-capable. Strangely, there is not a lot of really good bluetooth mice in stores in our area. I vaguely remembered that the Microsoft mouse 5000 is a bad choice. I tried one a couple of years ago and had to return it, because it costs dearly, but had crappy ergonomics. I stopped by the store to check the new MS Sculpt touch mouse, it's a bit better, but too flat for me.

After a few visits to various stores, I bought a brand new mouse. It's a Kensington Suretrack mouse. Amazon sells it for a bit cheaper than our local stores, hence the link.

That's a pretty decent thing. Matte black, with rubber side grips, solid looking. Very accurate. Works perfectly on all of my desk surfaces, never skips. It's a bit bigger than an average laptop mouse, which should be good for people with larger hands.

It has one big disadvantage for me. It's heavy. Why? It requires two AA batteries. Needless to say, I hated it from the first moment, because of its weight.

The solution came pretty quickly though. I went to eBay and searched for a battery adapter from AA to AAA. After a few minutes of browsing, I bought a pack of 10 battery adapters for $7 with free shipping. I only needed two, but smaller amounts were all in China, and I wanted quicker shipment, so I bought it right out of the first seller who was located in the US. Well, turned out he is in China too. The good thing is that the package took only 3 days to come, from which I can deduce the item was located stateside.

Anyway, the mouse is now about 30% lighter, and works great from two AAA batteries. See the photos below.







1 comment:

  1. Kensington Suretrack mouse pairing code is 0000. Just wanted to publish this here as a reminder. Spent hours googling the pairing code for this mouse. Kensington user manual is a joke, it only contains instruction of how to insert batteries. Overall, the mouse is pretty good. AA batteries last about 2 months. The AAA batteries (see photo) last about a month.

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