Kensington SlimBlade Presenter Media Mouse with Mouse, Presenter and Media Controller in One (Pewter) K72280US | List Price: $79.99
Discount Price: $35.11
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Brand: Kensington
Binding: Electronics
Warranty: 5 years warranty
Features: - 3-in-1 mouse/presenter/media controller all in one
- Unique Scroll Ball provides easy and intuitive 360-degree scrolling
- Battery indicator light is green then changes to red as battery level gets low
- Multifunction navigation pad included
- Mouse goes into sleep mode when your notebook does to prevent power drain
don't recommend [Posted on 2008-05-04]
Wished I could replace my old mouse and presenter with this gadget. Disappointed soon after using it for a few times. Without the middle button function, it doesn't count as a mouse for me at all; the laser pointer works but has a very tiny spot; though the usb interface is small, it's not small enough to be left plugged to laptop all the time and it's inconvenient store it because you need to open the battery door every time; finally the door can't be closed firmly and I had to return it.
Very portable, mouse and presenter in one [Posted on 2008-05-30]
PROS : Its a nice little mouse/presenter. Its slim profile and light weight make it really very portable. The tiny USB receiver is housed in the battery slot while carrying it so no extra space needed to carry it. No hassle of turning the mouse on and off. When you put the USB receiver in the batter slot, its automatically off. This extends the battery life. The track ball is nice while working on stuff where you might need to scroll in all directions. Otherwise it won't be of much use to you. The presenter/media mode can be turned on/off by flipping a switch at the back of the mouse. I have not used it much in the media mode but its pretty useful if you want to control your media, pretty much like a remote control, if you would. The presenter mode is very functional. So in meetings or presentations, you could use this as a laser pointer and to switch the slides. I wanted a portable mouse and presenter and this one suited me the best.
CONS: Some people may feel uncomfortable with its slim profile if they are used to of using thicker mouse where you palm goes over it and takes the shape of it. But you can get used to of it, no big deal. I wish it had fwd-back functions on top like most have these days. It makes the browsing much easier/faster. So I miss them at times. Track ball movement can be tricky in the beginning so it will take a while to be precise with it.
I didn't give it 5 stars because it lacks fwd-back functions for browsing. All in all, I would say, its an excellent and very portable mouse/presenter for the price. I chose this over its bluetooth version because not all computers/laptops have bluetooth, not quite yet :) So you may give it a shot if it fits your needs and budget.
multifunction devices have compromises [Posted on 2008-08-02]
The product works as advertised, but the navigation of the remote I find to be difficult.
Another tremendous disappointment from Kensington [Posted on 2008-09-17]
I purchased this mouse at the beginning of the week, to reduce the amount of gadgets I have to carry. I'm a university professor and give six lectures a week. I wanted to be able to dump my notebook mouse and presentation clicker for one device. After four days of using this product, I could not be more disappointed with it.
First, the scroll ball feature simply does not work. My MacBook Pro gets info from it only sporadically; perhaps every 20 strokes of it with my finger gets a fraction of an inch of movement from a document or web page. And it's erratic even then.
Second, the driver software simply does not work with Mac OS X 10.5. I have all the most recent system and security updates, etc. I'm meticulous about keeping a clean system to avoid incompatibilities, etc. (I'm one of the 17 Mac users on the entire planet that actually uses anti-virus software...) After repeatedly installing, uninstalling, and reinstalling the driver software (as per the advice of Kensington's tech support staff) no preference pane has been installed on my system.
Further, the built in drivers in OS X's System Preference don't have any effect on the behavior of the buttons, scroll ball, or tracking speed of the mouse. So there is no way to configure how the mouse works. To top it off, if you plug the receiver in before you log in to your Mac, it causes a hard crash; a complete system freeze including the display, which requires a hard re-set to recover from.
Last but not least, the usability of the presentation controls is awkward at best. Individual buttons are hard to find and press because of the small size and recessed placing of the control pad. The laser pointer is dimmer than the one in the clicker I'd been using up until this week, and again, is hard to activate because of the design of the control pad. I find myself stopping in the middle of talking because my fingers have slipped off the pad and I need to find the buttons again. And finally, it's confusing because when you try to click a button on the control pad, the mouse buttons on the other side get clicked instead as they require less effort to click, so you have to hold the mouse tightly enough to click both buttons (mouse and control pad buttons) when you want to page forward in Keynote, or you have to hold it awkwardly which then also fatigues your hand.
I really wanted to like this product. I've given it a whole week of regular use with my MacBook Pro. I've spent several hours trying to troubleshoot these issues. I've exchanged several emails with Kensington tech support. All to no avail. This product is nearly worthless; it works poorly as a mouse and as a presentation device. This is the second Kensington mouse in a row I've had extremely poor results with. Save your money, don't buy this thing, you'll regret it. Get something from Logitech instead. This weekend I'm going back to the store I bought this from and returning it. Then I'm going to get a nice logitech mouse and go back to using my old presentation clicker again.
Laser failed [Posted on 2008-11-16]
The first time I tried to use it in an actual presentation, the laser wouldn't work.
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