Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse (Black)

Pros: Manufacturing quality
Industrial Design
Blue Track

Cons: Limited to USB adapter
No navigational gesture support
Physical On/Off switching

Summary: Just grabbed one at Costco today for $39.95. Once I got it out of the box (which was a struggle with the Costco OOBE), I was Happy to see the Blue Track logo. Yea, ToEbG (tracks on everything but glass)!

I was disappointed to discover that I would be giving up a precious USB port forever to its nano adapter. Still not clear what happens if I ever misplace one of those dinky-dongles and hope to pair my not-lost-mouse with something else.

Too bad it shuts down when you squash it. Makes sense functionally, but feels like a miss for me in the fidget-factor/delighter dimension. I could have whiled away many a meeting (while actually paying attention) if I could have dissipated nervous energy quietly going boing-boing-boing with my spiffy flattening/arcing mouse.

A real shame (to me) that there currently seems to be no support for navigational gestures. I am completely dependent on browser and shell navigation through side buttons. Arc Touch apparently supports none of these. The only workflows I see for doing this are; mousing over to browser navigation, or right-click/select from a context menu, both are weak and clunky alternatives when once accustomed to doing this with a thumb-twitch.

It seems like this could have been handled with some sort of gross-movement vocabulary (a la Sensiva Symbol Commander). At least, unlike the "smash-off" feature, this isn't hard-baked into the physical device, so this could be addressed in software. There might be hope that they're prioritizing it, or I suppose I could try to find a third-party solution

As much as I don't use most of the features of my MSFT Presenter Mouse 8000 (there's a whole other post there), at least it pairs with the native Bluetooth radio in my laptop and is has side buttons. It will remain my primary pointing-device mobile stuff as a corridor/road warrior, which is probably an indicator that I am not within the lifestyle target for Arc Touch anyway... Never mind, ignore everything I just wrote.