Use a Gaming Mouse and Browse the Web Like a King. I’ve been a Mac user for a decade, but I’ve always hated Apple’s default one- button mouse, and I’ve never gotten comfortable with trackpad gestures. I grew up using a three- button mouse on the family Amiga. Years later, I loved scroll wheels, trackballs, and mice with thumb buttons, but I wanted more. For the past six years I’ve used a 1. Latest trending topics being covered on ZDNet including Reviews, Tech Industry, Security, Hardware, Apple, and Windows. Shop Plantronics Office Phone Accessories at Staples. Save big on our wide selection of Plantronics Office Phone Accessories and get fast & free shipping on select. Shop Office Phone Headsets at Staples. Choose from our wide selection of Office Phone Headsets and get fast & free shipping on select orders. InformationWeek.com: News, analysis and research for business technology professionals, plus peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. Engage with our community. This is a great selection.of pretty old games. After a couple of years of knowing they bought an. UpdateStar is compatible with Windows platforms. UpdateStar has been tested to meet all of the technical requirements to be compatible with Windows 10, 8.1, Windows 8. Register Your Product. To get the best customer care, product tips and more. Not for gaming, and not for bizarre 3. D applications, but so I can browse the web. The default keyboard shortcuts for web browsing are anti- ergonomic. I spend most of my day in Chrome, using shortcuts like ctrl- shift- tab and option- command- left, a tabletop game of Twister that leaves me with a sore left thumb. I’ve tried custom keyboard shortcuts with Shortkeys, but every key combo still feels like a Rube Goldberg machine compared to the instant gratification of a dedicated mouse button. This works outside a browser. Whether you spend your day in Word, Photoshop, Power. Point, or Excel, you have a set of functions you use all the time, functions that deserve their own button. Follow me into the future of work. Choose your mouse. Get the mouse that matches your comfort level. If you’re used to a simple two- button mouse, you might want to start out by just adding two thumb buttons. If you’re already adept with gestures, you’re ready for more. Here are the best options at each level. Beginner mice. A lot of mice now come with two extra buttons above the thumb, for going back and forward in history. Even the $1. 0 Vic. Tsing MM0. 57, Amazon’s top- selling mouse, has a pair. It’s a nice start, but it’s just that—the start of a mouse’s potential. Plus the thin, flimsy thumb buttons on many of these budget mice are easy to accidentally click. That wheel in the middle of your mouse is good for more than just scrolling—in fact, the button can . So they cost more, they include complex sensitivity settings that you won’t use, and they tend to look like Decepticons with tribal tattoos. If you can live with all that, $4. The optimal arrangement spreads the extra buttons out among different fingers, so no one finger has to “remember” more than a couple movements. Logitech dominates this space with several moderately priced gaming mice. My favorite is the Logitech G7. Most of the buttons are heavily contoured to suggest rocking back and forth between pairs of complementary functions. One of the center buttons is mechanically dedicated to switching scroll modes, but the other, while hard to reach with the middle finger, can still fill any lesser- used function. The tilt scroll registers on the Mac as a button press, which requires a third- party driver to fix. The G7. 00s is a great choice for small hands. Its wireless capability requires a USB receiver, but it still beats any Bluetooth mouse I can find. The Logitech G6. 02 ($4. Juggling six thumb buttons can be a bit confusing, but it’s intuitive if all your custom functions come in pairs. Like the G7. 00s, it uses a USB receiver in wireless mode. The Logitech MX Master ($6. It provides five extra buttons and a thumb scroll. It fits large hands, and it works wirelessly over Bluetooth without a receiver. Logitech’s MX Revolution and Performance MX mice are two of the most popular, well- loved mice of. At this point you’re just building a second keyboard that you can’t hunt and peck on. The Elecom Dux has 1. Battlestar Galactica. Its buttons are unwieldy and some are hard to reach. It doesn’t work on a Mac, even with third- party mouse drivers, and the manual is in Japanese. But on a PC, once you install Elecom’s driver, you could practically type with it. Assign your buttons. Your button functions will depend on your workflow. If, like me, you live inside your browser, your biggest needs are navigating your history and tabs. If you’re working with photos or video, you can assign buttons to zoom functions. Even functions with one- key shortcuts are sometimes more convenient as mouse buttons. For example, while Photoshop, Premiere, and Final Cut include single- key shortcuts for switching tools, it can be more intuitive to make these switches with your mouse hand. Here’s my setup on the Logitech G7. Front thumb buttons (G7 and G5): Browser history backward and forward. Back thumb buttons (G6 and G4): Reveal desktop and reveal all windows. Front forefinger buttons (G1. G9): Switch tabs back and forward. Back forefinger button (G8): Open new tab. Bottom middle finger button (G1. Re- open last closed tab. Pick a mouse driver. Mouse drivers still exist, and they’re great. On a PC, if your mouse buttons aren’t fully reprogrammable out of the box, the manufacturer’s site will have a driver. Logitech and Razer both have some pretty awesome gaming peripherals. Whether you’re playing games. Steer. Mouse ($2. Siri, and Spotlight. It’s a lot to shell out just to make a mouse work, but it’s worth it. If that’s too rich, use Better. Touch. Tool ($5), a powerful app that can also assign new functions to keyboard shortcuts, trackpad gestures, Magic Mouse gestures, and Siri remote gestures and buttons. Better. Touch. Tool can’t assign scroll functions, so it can’t fix the G7. This whole setup may seem excessive, but once you settle in, it becomes intuitive and comfortable. In my research, I’ve learned that customizing a gaming mouse for non- gaming use is rare and nerdy and will get you roasted around the office. That’s fine. Some day your co- workers will come to you with their broken thumbs and shout “Save us!” And you’ll look down from your standing desk and whisper “No.”.
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