Kensington took its time bringing an optical version of its venerable Turbo Mouse to market. The Turbo Mouse was the original multi-button ADB trackball, introduced back in the late 1980s with two buttons and evolving through the late 1990s into a four-button, do-everything wunderkind of a mouse. Unfortunately, Kensington didn’t rush to produce a USB version once the iMac hit the market, leaving users stuck with the imperfect solution of a USB-ADB converter or—heaven forbid—even worse, the stock iMac mouse. Finally, when it got a USB version to market, the rest of the market had moved on to the optical mouse, and Kensington’s renamed Expert Mouse was behind the times again. No longer. The latest revision of the Expert Mouse, version 7.0, has been out for about a year, and it fully lives up to its billing as the “ultimate trackball.” With USB connectivity, optical tracking, four programmable buttons, a brilliantly conceived “Scroll Ring,” an included wrist rest, and a billiard-size trackball, this mouse is the whole package. Let’s get one thing out of the way: the Expert Mouse is the epitome of all things trackball. It’s the latest offspring of the original trackball mouse. If you’re a trackball-hater, approach this review with an open mind. Don’t hate the player. Hate the game—and Kensington’s game is not to be hated lightly. A good mouse starts off with one of two things: either it’s dead simple or it has great software. Apple has always taken the dead-simple route. Kensington takes the opposite tack, with incredible software that makes an otherwise complex mouse quite easy to use. Software has traditionally been a Kensington strong point, and the latest version of MouseWorks for Mac OS X is no exception. The only drawback is that third-party mouse support has disappeared. (A little-known secret on the Classic Mac OS was the fact that Kensington’s ADB MouseWorks software was amazingly supportive of non-Kensington devices, sort of like an ADB version of USB Overdrive.) It’s hard to find fault with Kensington for failing to re-implement this feature when it rewrote the software from scratch for Mac OS X.
Usually if you buy a different mouse it will still work. Hook your new mouse up to the computer and you won't have to worry about the red ball in your mouse.
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Kensington took its time bringing an optical version of its venerable Turbo Mouse to market. The Turbo Mouse was the original multi-button ADB trackball, introduced back in the late 1980s with two buttons and evolving through the late 1990s into a four-button, do-everything wunderkind of a mouse. Unfortunately, Kensington didn’t rush to produce a USB version once the iMac hit the market, leaving users stuck with the imperfect solution of a USB-ADB converter or—heaven forbid—even worse, the stock iMac mouse. Finally, when it got a USB version to market, the rest of the market had moved on to the optical mouse, and Kensington’s renamed Expert Mouse was behind the times again.
No longer.
The latest revision of the Expert Mouse, version 7.0, has been out for about a year, and it fully lives up to its billing as the “ultimate trackball.” With USB connectivity, optical tracking, four programmable buttons, a brilliantly conceived “Scroll Ring,” an included wrist rest, and a billiard-size trackball, this mouse is the whole package.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: the Expert Mouse is the epitome of all things trackball. It’s the latest offspring of the original trackball mouse. If you’re a trackball-hater, approach this review with an open mind. Don’t hate the player. Hate the game—and Kensington’s game is not to be hated lightly.
A good mouse starts off with one of two things: either it’s dead simple or it has great software. Apple has always taken the dead-simple route. Kensington takes the opposite tack, with incredible software that makes an otherwise complex mouse quite easy to use.
Software has traditionally been a Kensington strong point, and the latest version of MouseWorks for Mac OS X is no exception. The only drawback is that third-party mouse support has disappeared. (A little-known secret on the Classic Mac OS was the fact that Kensington’s ADB MouseWorks software was amazingly supportive of non-Kensington devices, sort of like an ADB version of USB Overdrive.) It’s hard to find fault with Kensington for failing to re-implement this feature when it rewrote the software from scratch for Mac OS X.
Usually if you buy a different mouse it will still work. Hook your new mouse up to the computer and you won't have to worry about the red ball in your mouse.