How a Bluetooth Mouse Saved My Life... Er, Wrist

Radtech's BT500 Bluetooth Mouse

I've been in the market for a good mouse for awhile. I had been using Apple's regular mouse for years, then switched to the Bluetooth version. The wireless aspect was certainly cool, though it felt really heavy for my hand. It also didn't seem to track very smoothly and every time I picked it up the batteries were dead (see? I'm not a MacMac after all). I'd been skulking around different web sites looking for a good mouse to test out when I came across Radtech's BT500.

I. Love. This. Mouse. It's small, it feels *so* good in my hand, and it's wireless to boot. Can it possibly get any better than that? Why yes, it certainly can. It has three buttons and (here's the biggy) a scroll wheel. Now, that may not be a big deal to some, but trust me... this feature *literally* saved my wrist. Here's why.

For the entire month of July I've been toiling under a particularly nasty deadline on the upcoming iLife '05: The Missing Manual book by David Pogue. I created the book from scratch, taking exerts from various other Missing Manuals -- deleting unnecessary chunks, renaming/renumbering graphics -- to produce this big monster in InDesign. You can imagine that there was a fair amount of scrolling involved. I never dreamed how much this little wheel was going to save me in wrist pain, and the difference was overwhelming. The guys at Radtech sent me this little gem about midway through the project, when I was getting used to going to bed with some pretty serious wrist pain. In about a day, all that changed. You had to feel it to believe it.

The only bit of weirdness I experienced with the mouse is that there are some surfaces it just doesn't like. I have a black desk that's really slick and it refuses to work on it; however, if I place a piece of paper underneath, it's fine. The other minor annoyance was getting it paired to my laptop. Turns out, one really should read the owner's manual first! If I had, I would have known that it's necessary to push a little gray button on the bottom for it to be discoverable (shown here towards the bottom left). Also shown in this photo is the handy on/off switch that saves on battery life. The two AAA batts pop in just beneath the mouse's backend cover on the top.

Overall, I simply can't recommend this mouse enough, especially for my small hand size. And with it being so tiny itself, it's a perfect travel companion. Thank you Radtech!