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The arrival of my Quill mouse test units was particularly timely. After staying fairly low-key for several months, the fibromyalgia symptoms in my hands, arms, and shoulders flared up big time in late October, worse than they have ever been, and this has been seriously affecting my ability to work, even with the help of dictation software and doing 98% of my mouse clicking with a foot mouse. Every keystroke and mouse movement becomes an adventure in pain when these attacks set in. It is, to say the least, distracting.

I would have gotten through the past several weeks without the Quill mouse, but it would have been significantly more unpleasant than it has been.

There are many “ergonomic” pointing devices available, and I’ve tried a fair few of them over the years. All are designed to address the stress that small motor movements, such as keyboarding, mouse-clicking and cursor manipulation, put on muscles, ligaments, tendons, and nerves, and they all succeed to varying degrees.

I’m not sure that I should call my problems in this regard repetitive stress injury (RSI) per se. Computer work aggravates it, but it doesn’t seem to be the cause, since I have similar symptoms all over my body, including places like my face that are not associated with typing or computer workstation posture. I have a pretty good chair with lots of lower back support, and my keyboard and mice are situated at the proper height for the recommended posture of one’s arms hanging directly down from the shoulders, and the elbows at 90 degree angles.

However, for mousing with conventional computer mice, one has to grip the mouse with a certain amount of muscle pressure, and exert more pressure on the mouse button or buttons for clicking. The stress may seem small, but it builds up over long computer sessions, and the on-off motion of clicking involves nerve impulses combined with repeated muscle tensing and relaxing, which is irritating to soft tissues and nerves, at least to the extent I understand it as a layman, and have empirically experienced it.

Designer Appliances Computer Mouse products are designed, subject to their correct use, to minimize the torsional biomechanical load that can result from mousing with the hand in the palm down position. The explanation for this is that when using non-biomechanically designed mice it is typical that the palm, the inner wrist and forearm are twisted through a quarter turn (rotated 90 degrees) and it is this rotation away from the usual resting position of the hand and wrist that creates a strain through the arm and into the shoulder. This can reduce blood flow and increase pressure on the Median nerve and other nerves of the mousing limb which may lead to pain and tingling sensations that can indicate the onset of trauma and if not corrected, lead to more permanent damage.

The Quill is the first and only Grip-Less mouse that allows you to move the pointer without any gripping stress on your hand or arm muscles, so your hand remains relaxed. The Quill is also the only mouse product to manage the degree of “wrist bend” when using the mouse. By rotating the hand into the “handshake” position, the Quill not only removes the “twist” from then arm so “unwinding” the Median nerve, but it also removes the usual “bend” of the wrist that users adopt when the mouse is lower than the arm. The “handshake” position supported by The Quill guides the user into having the forearm at the same height as the mouse. The Wrist Guide then maintains the arm/wrist/hand configuration within Biomechanically sound degrees of flex.

One places one’s hand into the Quill’s channel in a “handshake” orientation, so that the mouse’s “button mound” meets and supports the forefinger and palm of the hand comfortably. The heel of the hand, the wrist, and the forearm rest in the channel or “wrist and arm guide,” and the thumb is free to float or rest on the outside of the button mound. This orientation is indeed comfortable and relaxed, although I would suggest that it could be improved with some sort of rest indentation or shelf for the thumb -- but that’s a minor criticism.

Most of the mouse tracking movement is made from the elbow and shoulder rather than from the wrist or fingers. It takes some getting used to, and is not as precise as fine motor movements of the hand, but it is less stressful and more comfortable once you have become acclimatized. I familiarized myself with “mousing from the elbow” several years ago with an ANIR/ Dr. Mouse joystick-style mouse.

However, the Quill mouse is an even more radical and highly-engineered departure from standard mouse design than the ANIR mouse is.

With this mouse interface orientation, there is no longer any need to use the fingertips to press the mouse buttons, causing the fingers to “claw.” A small movement of the finger from the big joint where it meets the hand is sufficient to press the Quill mouse buttons, which have a delightfully light action. The scroll wheel can be rolled with the inside of the middle or index finger.

The Quill mouse comes in both right-handed and left-handed versions. I tested both, as I mouse with both hands, tending to use a left-hand mouse more extensively these days even though I’m righthanded, because my right arm is more severely affected by fibromyalgia pain and peripheral neuropathy.

With right-handed Quills, the “right click button” is uppermost in the “ left click” is the bottom line. With a left-handed Quill mouse, the upper button is still “ right-click” and the lower button “left click.” The buttons are also user programmable.

The Quill is a corded optical unit, and is the largest mouse I have ever used by a wide margin, dwarfing even the large size Contour Perfit mouse. However, it is amazingly light, and feels even lighter than it is because of its formidable size. It weighs about 150 g, or exactly the same as the conventionally sized Logitec Cordless Mouseman (including two AA batteries for the latter). By comparison, a standard Apple ADB mouse weighs 100 g, and an iMac hockey pock mouse about 85 g.

In any case, the Quill mouse glides effortlessly on the mouse pad, and its three buttons (the second one also a scroll wheel) have a feather-light touch as well. The reason the Quill mouse is so large is that it incorporates the channel I described above in which to rest the side of your hand and wrist. The buttons and scroll wheel are activated by the middle part of your index and big fingers, rather than the tips, which results in lower stress on the muscles and nerves.

The Quill mouse has been in development for over a year, and has been biomechanicaly engineered to help minimize Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) -- disorders that occur from prolonged, repetitious use of limbs, and in the case of the mouse overuse, the hands through to the shoulder.

So how does the Quill perform functionally as a mouse? Quite well indeed. The tracking seems accurate and precise, and the three buttons and scroll wheel are convenient in OS X where they are supported. All the buttons revert to a standard click in OS 9, and the scroll wheel does not work, although it may be possible to enable it with a third party driver like USB Overdrive. I did not test this. (The Quill mouse also comes with a PS2 adapter for use with non USB equipped PCs)

My only significant complaint about this mouse is that about two times out of three, the mouse will lose contact with the USB bus after the computer is put to sleep and reawakened. This happens in both OS X and OS 9. I’ve experienced the same phenomenon occasionally with other USB pointing devices, but never as frequently as with this mouse. The workaround is to unplug and reinsert the USB connector in the USB port, which is simple enough to do, but an annoyance. Still, I’m more than willing to put up with that inconvenience in order to benefit from the comfort this mouse affords.

I can say without equivocation or qualification that the Quill mouse is the most comfortable mouse I’ve ever used, and that it is the only one these days that I can click with my hand for more than a few minutes without causing significant pain.

Despite the USB glitch, I’m giving the Quill mouse a full 5-A Applelinks rating.

The Quill mouse sells for US$120.00/Can$195.00

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

For sales in Continental Europe, contact ContinentalEurope@quillmouse.com and provide proposed shipping information.

For Pacific Rim sales, contact PacificRim@quillmouse.com and provide proposed shipping information.

Charles W. Moore

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