If you happen to be a keen amateur photographer, complete with a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS3 on your machine, then the SpaceNavigator will appear quite attractive. Well a large part of the answer to that question is what you consider the average PC user to be. You’d be surprised what you can do with your left hand once you start using it though – I’m not saying that I’d want to use a conventional mouse in my left hand, but working with my mouse in my right hand and the SpaceNavigator in my left becomes surprisingly intuitive, surprisingly quickly.īut the big question is whether the average PC (or Mac) user actually needs the SpaceNavigator. This takes a bit of getting used to at first, since you’re generally not as delicate or accurate with your left (read not dominant) hand. The idea is that you still use your standard mouse in your right hand (assuming you’re right handed) and use the SpaveNavigator in your left. The buttons can also be mapped to keyboard shortcuts for each application that you use the device with. You can of course tailor the sensitivity using the supplied utility. The SpaceNavigator is extremely sensitive, and only requires the slightest movement on any axis. There’s not a great degree of movement in any direction, but you don’t really need it. Add to this tilting movement across the same four axis, and a twisting movement left and right, and it’s clear that there’s a lot of functionality squeezed into that black rubber dial. You also get complete movement on a horizontal plane – forwards, backwards, left and right. The base needs to be heavy because one axis is vertical – so you can pull the SpaceNavigator up away from the desk, and push it down towards the desk. In fact, you’ll have a tough time moving it, since the solid metal base makes the device very heavy. Unlike a conventional mouse, the SpaceNavigator doesn’t move. OK, so you do get two shortcut buttons, but you’re not going to be mapping all your keyboard shortcuts to those. As such, the SpaceNavigator is a far more affordable option, pretty much doing away with all the shortcut buttons and offering just the 3D navigation. The result is a setup that requires almost no use of the keyboard, and leaves the standard mouse free to handle editing duties while the 3Dconnexion device deals with all the navigation and selection duties.īut the underlying technology behind 3Dconnexion’s products can also bring benefits to general users, or keen hobbyists. Most of 3Dconnexion’s products are aimed at the high-end CAD or computer animation user, by combining the 3D mouse technology with a range of buttons that can be mapped to keyboard shortcuts. 3Dconnexion is actually an arm of Logitech, which is no real surprise considering Logitech’s standing in the mouse market. This is where 3Dconnexion comes in – a company dedicated to make heavy mouse users more efficient with its range of 3D mice. But even keyboard shortcuts can’t save you from having to use your mouse for navigation as well as editing in an application like Photoshop. The most obvious solution is to adopt an encyclopaedia of keyboard shortcuts, thus cutting down on all those drop down menu selections. Having suffered in the past from mouse-induced RSI, I’m well aware that the amount of mouse work you do can have very nasty results, so being able to cut down on the amount of mouse movements can only be a good thing. But one thing remains constant, your mouse does pretty much everything. Of course mouse technology has moved on massively since the early days of rubber balls and sticky buttons, and most “serious” PC users will have a specific choice of mouse – the TR office is generally split between Logitech and Razer users for instance. Anyone who works with a computer every day probably spends many hours with a mouse in their hand, clicking icons, opening drop down menus and selecting tools – the mouse is an integral part of pretty much every operating system and application. The humble mouse has become a ubiquitous part of our daily lives.
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