Along with the keyboard, the pointing device is our most intimate tactile connection with our computers. The mouse, trackpad, or trackball serves as an extension of our hand to reach into cyberspace. The original essence of Macintosh computing was the Graphical User Interface, which was enabled by the mouse.

I use a variety of pointing devices, and often have as many as three connected at a time. Chronic polyneuritis and what is probably fibromyalgia keeps me in significant pain much of the time, and I try to spread the stress on my arms and hands around as much as possible, as well as alternating different types of devices in order to cut down on repetitive motions performed by the same muscles, joints, and ligaments. This is an autoimmune or allergy problem -- not repetitive stress injury per se, as it affects me to varying degrees all over my body, but it certainly is aggravated by repetitive stress, especially small motor movements like typing and mouse clicking.

All three of my computers support both USB and ADB thanks to adapters from Griffin and MacAlly, which broadens the selection of pointing devices available for use.

Cirque Easy Cat Touchpad

For the past year, my favorite pointing device has been the nifty Cirque Easy Cat freestanding USB trackpad. Theoretically, trackpads are ergonomically superior to other pointing devices because little or no movement is needed from the shoulder, arm, wrist or hand. I've never been especially enamored of the trackpads built into PowerBooks. Cirque's technology and engineering in their trackpads is different from that used in the units Apple installs in the PowerBook and iBook. (Memo to Apple; Cirque makes OEM trackpad units -- how about it?)

Thanks to "GlidePoint Control," Cirque's touchpads require NO finger pressure, as opposed to semi-conductive or resistive types of touch devices which detect pressure only. Cursor control is effortless and smooth, at twice the resolution of a typical mouse.

That has been evident over the year that I've been using my Easy Cat, which is much more tolerant, for example of moisture on one's fingers than the PowerBook trackpads are. My son, a trackpad aficionado who dislikes mice, declares the Cirque Easy Cat Touchpad to be an excellent example of the technology. Coming from someone who almost exclusively uses trackpads, that's high praise

I liked the Cirque trackpad right from the start, and my enthusiasm hasn't wavered over the past 12 months of use. My only misgiving about the Easy Cat initially was that the twin click buttons seemed a bit less robust than they might have been, but I have had no problems. I would still like the button action to be lighter, but that's a personal preference.

The Easy Cat, by contrast, can be positioned almost anywhere within reach of its luxuriously long USB cord. (As an aside, what is it with Apple and their absurdly short mouse cords? In my opinion, mouse and keyboard cables can never be too long -- within reason).

The Easy Cat's long cord and two buttons also make it easy to alternate hands in order to spread the stress.

The pad surface itself is about one-third larger than the trackpad on my WallStreet PowerBook, and there are two buttons on the near side of the housing. On Macs, these both work is standard mouse buttons. (More on this in a moment.)

The real beauty of the Easy Cat is its precise responsiveness to finger tapping. It responds to the lightest feather touch for clicking, but still does not "misfire"-- a superb bit of engineering. To drag, draw, or highlight text, you just double tap rapidly and begin the motion in one smooth movement on the second tap without lifting your finger.

Left mouse "clicks" are performed by lightly tapping a finger on the touchpad surface; right mouse "clicks" are activated by tapping in the pad's shaded upper corner. The slightly textured areas at the pad's edge indicate when the finger has entered the "GlideExtend" region, a "smart hardware" feature that allows the finger to reposition after reaching the edge while the cursor is held in place. "GlideExtend" allows you to drag farther than the margin of the pad surface. There is a textured margin on all four sides of the trackpad. If you are dragging something and you get to this textured edge zone, GlideExtend will hold a drag for three seconds while you reposition your finger to complete the operation.

To adjust settings such as tracking speed, use the Mouse Control Panel (not the Trackpad Control Panel, even on PowerBooks).

Advanced pointing features:
• Wheel-mouse scroll (with USB Overdrive - see below) -- Activate vertical scrolling by simply gliding a finger along the right touchpad edge. No more pausing to click-click-click the scroll bars.
• Right tap zone (with USB Overdrive - see below) -- Secondary mouse clicks provide quick access to submenus. These can be activated by tapping a finger in the pad's upper right corner.
• Left tap zone -- Primary mouse clicks can be activated by tapping anywhere outside the right tap zone on the touchpad surface.
• Drag, draw, highlight -- Just double-tap and glide your finger on the pad, or hold the • GlideExtend -- Hold your place on-screen when you reach the pad's edge. The area is marked on the pad surface with a change of texture -- no more running off the mouse pad!

The Easy Cat does not ship with any software of its own, and a couple of the trackpad's advanced features supported on Windows PCs are consequently disabled on Mac installations (a result of Apple's prejudice against multi-button mice). However, there is a theoretical workaround.

Shareware software called USB Overdrive created by Alessandro Levi Montalcini is recommended (although not supported) by Cirque for users who wish to enable the Easy Cat Trackpad's "wheel mouse" scrolling and right-click submenu access features, (which respectively allow you to scroll through documents or web pages by gliding your finger along the trackpad's right margin). USB Overdrive enables button reprogramming, submenu launching vertical scrolling and more.

You can download the USB Overdrive software from:
http://www.usboverdrive.com

I'm going to give this product five smileys out of five.

System Requirements:
• Mac operating system with USB support or Windows 98/2000
• Available USB port

Physical Specifications:
• 2.7 in. long x 3.4 in. wide x 0.5 in. deep
• 6-ft. USB cable
• Two mechanical buttons
• No contact pressure required

The Cirque Easy Cat USB Touchpad for Mac or PC sells for $49.95.

For more information, visit:
http://www.cirque.com/

Contour Perfit Mouse

As noted earlier, I use more than one. device simultaneously, and a mode that works for me is to use the Easy Cat trackpad with my right hand for tapping and clicking, while positioning the cursor with a mouse operated by my left hand. As I said, it spreads the stress around.

Another pointing device that I keep in the rotation is the Contour Perfit Mouse , which is, all round, the most ergonomically comfortable mouse that I've yet encountered. Contour's James Golden agrees that "Alternating is always a good thing. I have been there myself. We actually found that alternating tendon use is a critical element in solving this problem for many users."

The Perfit is unique (I think) in being offered in a wide range of sizes to fit different sized hands. Contour reasons that when you shop for shoes or gloves, you try them on and buy the size that is the most comfortable. Why should a mouse be different? The model I have is a "Large" size righthanded mouse, and it is indeed the biggest mouse I've ever used, albeit not the heaviest in weight.

The Contour Perfit Mouse also comes in four other righthanded versions, and three lefthanded versions which Contour claims offers permits performance and ergonomic benefits that simply can't be achieved by any "one size fits all" mouse. The Mouse is available in extra-small, small, medium, large, and extra-large for the right hand and small, medium and large for the left hand, and is designed to fit the hand so precisely that multiple sizes are necessary to maximize the total impact of the ergonomic design.

Sizing instructions on Contour's Web site allow you to determine the proper size of Contour Perfit Mouse for you before ordering.

The Perfit Mouse is also designed to minimize biomechanical load and to reduce hand and arm deviations from the neutral pronation position. The mouse's top surface is contoured to fit the palm of the hand to disperse pressure across the palm during use, and the thumb side of the mouse is higher than the other to minimize pronation strain. There is also a support provided for the thumb, which allows movement of the mouse with reduced Pinch Force which is known to increase the risk of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

The prescribed way to manipulate the Perfit Mouse is to lay your hand more or less flat on top of the mouse, with the weight of your hand and arm resting on your palm, your fingers together rather than spread, with your index, middle, and ring fingers resting lightly on the Contour Perfit Mouse's three buttons. The buttons are elevated and shaped to reduce load on the fingertips.

The elevated wrist support reduces pressure on the wrist by keeping it off the desktop, maintains a straighter wrist alignment, minimizes lateral deviation, balances the hand in a neutral, tilted posture, and prevents static grip by allowing the hand to rock freely.

This posture allows mouse clicking pressure to come mainly from the whole finger being depressed from its base joint, which, once you get used to it, begins to feel quite correct and natural, as well as less stressful on the muscles of your fingers and wrists.

The Perfit Mouse has three buttons, and Alessandro Levi Montalcini's programmable Contour OverDrive software (see above) works with the Perfit too. Contour Overdrive is a custom version of USB Overdrive that wasÊspecifically designed for the Contour Design UniMouse and Perfit Mouse and does notÊsupport any other device. The mouse settings allow you to speed up your daily tasks by assigningÊuseful actions to all the extra buttons in your USB mouse. You'll typicallyÊwant to assign a control-click to the right button for easy contextual menuÊaccess, and use the middle button for auto-scrolling which makes it easy toÊscroll your documents using the mouse. All the settings can be configuredÊglobally or on an application-specific basis. enabling the user to have a "user definable" mouse Control Panel interface as well as application-specific mouse settings, such as auto-scrolling (the ability to scroll applications with a mouse button), smooth scrolling (line by line), user-definable keystrokes using the mouse, double-click, option-click, control-click, and a other button options.

A study entitled "A Joint Labor/Management Comparative Study of Various Non-Keyboard Input Devices in a Call Center Environment," by US West's Corporate Ergonomist, Jim Stewart and the Communication Workers of America's occupational safety and health director, David LeGrande, was presented at the 3rd Annual Applied Ergonomics Conference held in Los Angeles, California.

The ergonomic benefits of the Contour Perfit Mouse, Cirque Touchpad, and Logitech Mouseman were evaluated in this 6 week study conducted at the Albuquerque US West site. "A total of 66 subjects entered the study, and 61 completed all four phases of the study."

According to Stewart's research, "The Contour mouse groups responded most positively during the study period, including a positive assessment of smoothness of general effort required, accuracy and ease of use." Also, the Contour Perfit Mouse had the best ratings in "Comfort", "Ease of Use", "Accuracy", "Feel" and "Ease of Position" categories examined.

Some of the findings showed a 48% reduction in pain after 3 weeks of using the Contour Perfit Mouse compared to the original "Control" device, which was the Logitech Mouseman. The Contour Perfit Mouse users post-study results showed an increase in pain of 37% after taking the Contour Mouse away and giving the users back the "Control" device for a 4 week period.

You can read more about these studies and several others here:
http://www.contourdesign.com/perfit_why.htm

Contour's Perfit Mouse was also voted "The Best Ergonomic Product" at an exhibition of ergonomics products at the 13th Triennial Congress of the International Ergonomics Association in Tampere, Finland, where top ergonomists from all over the world came together to share their knowledge and experiences.

Contour's Perfit Mouse is available in both USB and ADB versions for the Mac, and supports System 7.0 or later. The the USB version comes in "Graphite & Ice" livery to match the Power Mac G4, the G4 Cube, and the iMac and iBook SE models in Graphite, and ais available in all seven sizes at a MSRP of $99.95. The ADB version ships and nation and sales for $89.95. A USB Perfit Silver Millennium Mouse is also available. USB requires Mac OS 8.5.1 or higher. MK Linux, Yellowdog Linux, and PPC Linux support.

It would be great to have a left handed Perfit Mouse in addition to the right handed one.

The Contour Perfit Mouse is a tad expensive, but it appears to be extremely high quality, and there is nothing else quite like it on the market. I'm giving it five smileys too.

For more information, visit:
http://www.contourdesign.com/perfit.htm

Animax Anir Mouse Ergonomic Mouse

A third pointing device that gets a lot of use in my pointing device rotation is the leaning joystick-shaped, Animax Anir Mouse from Norway

This is a simple idea; a pistol-grip on top of a conventional, albeit flattened, mouse base, with a thumb-button for clicking. Unlike conventional mice, which force your hand and forearm to assume a stressed, unnatural, flattened attitude, Anir Mouse allows your hand to remain in a relaxed, thumb-uppermost posture, which reduces muscle loading and relieves pressure on the median nerve.

Mouse movement with Dr. Mouse is accomplished by sweeping forearm movements rather than wrist flexing, and the thumb, your strongest digit, takes over button-clicking tasks.

In a study of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) and other computer-related medical complaints among its employees, Alcatel STK found that the Anir Mouse reduced injury-related absenteeism. "The results are surprisingly good. We have demonstrated a drastic reduction of pain in the shoulders, underarm, wrists and hands in the group which has used the Anir Vertical mouse. In addition, the incidence of headaches and illness-related absenteeism has fallen significantly," says Alcatel's senior company medical officer, Dr. Arne AarŒs.

I have been using the Anir Mouse off and on for more than two years. It does take some getting used to compared with conventional mice. I liked it from the start, although I was a bit clumsy mousing with it at first. I now have no problem switching back and forth -- sort of like going from a manual shift car to an automatic and back again.

Mousing in the thumb-up position does not feel quite as direct and precise as with a conventional mouse, and people who do critical on-screen work might not find the Anir Mouse an adequate solution (although it does resolve a respectable 400 dpi). Sweeping forearm movements from the elbow are not quite the ideal body-English for picking out individual tiny pixels. However, for word processing, finder navigation, and Web work, there should be no problem adapting to this device.

Anir Mouse is available in both conventional Mac ADB and USB configurations, and in two sizes. The large size fits hands measuring 3.5 to 4 inches across the palm of your hand at the base of your fingers (where your four fingers meet your palm). The Medium size is for persons with hands measuring 2.75 to 3.5 inches. The model I have is the large size, and although my hand measures only about 3.5", I found it none too large for a snug grip.

The Macintosh Anir Mouse requires no special mouse driver extension, and was designed so that it communicates directly with the operating system. Upon boot up the system polls the mouse port and our provides an 'M: class' code which tells the CPU it is a mouse and the drivers are in the firmware of the mouse. However, it is not programmable like the Easy Cat trackpad and the Perfit Mouse.

Anir mouse sells for $49.95 plus $30 shipping to North America.

Anir Mouse gets four smileys.

You can order Anir Mouse directly from Animax here:
http://www.animax.no/webshopintro.html

For more information, visit:
http://www.animax.no/

Apple Optical Mouse

While I'm at it, I'll include a few comments about the Apple Optical Mouse that came with my Cube, which is certainly the most spectacular looking pointing device I've ever encountered.

The "buttonless" design of the Apple Mouse allows me to press anywhere on the mouse housing for clicking and dragging, which has some ergonomic benefits, and the optical tracking technology makes mouse ball cleaning a thing of the past.

However, personally I find the Apple Mouse less ideal than the other two pointing devices discussed in this column. I find it heavier to push around, and its shape is not as ergonomic as the three devices discussed above. It is a very nice mouse for general, all-round use, but people like myself with peripheral pain problems that tend to be aggravated by computer work will probably find that one of the third-party ergonomic pointing devices suits their needs better.

Charles W. Moore