Of Mice and Microsoft

We published this story a couple weeks ago about a new Microsoft mouse with a "tilt wheel" that allows for horizontal scrolling by pushing the scroll wheel to the left or right. The story prompted an interesting response from reader Scott Reed.

"It’s nice and all, but IBM has had 360-degree scrolling 'wheels' (really a joystick where the wheel is on an MS mouse) for at least six months. And at $29 ... plus shipping for the ergonomic optical version they’re well under Microsoft’s price listed in your article," he wrote in an e-mail. "Yet again, Microsoft gets press for adopting existing technology."

Reed, who has been using the IBM mouse at work, pointed to this page on the IBM Web site for more details about the product. Ray Gorman, an IBM spokesman, confirmed via e-mail that IBM has had mice with horizontal scrolling capabilities since 1998. The company also offers a more basic mouse with the same feature, at a price of $24, compared with $44.95 for the most basic Microsoft tilt-wheel mouse.

For some answers, I turned to a Microsoft representative, who explained that the key advance in the company’s new mouse isn’t as much the mere ability to scroll horizontally as it is the method of doing it -- by simply tilting the same type of scroll wheel already used on many mice and favored by most consumers.

In addition to IBM, there are at least two other companies that make mice with horizontal scrolling capabilities, but none of them scrolls horizontally via the same tilting method that Microsoft’s new mouse uses. The IBM mouse, as Reed explained, uses something akin to a joystick. Another mouse, by IOGear, uses a roller ball. And various mice from Logitech, including the Cordless MouseMan Optical, allow horizontal scrolling via the traditional scroll wheel, but only as an alternative to vertical scrolling (the user has to reprogram the mouse to switch between the horizontal and vertical functions).

"From the research that we’ve done and the analysts we’ve spoken to, the Microsoft scroll wheel is groundbreaking for being a fully integrated mouse wheel that allows users to scroll horizontally by moving the wheel left and right, as well as vertically, without major changes to how the wheel looks and feels," the Microsoft representative explained in an e-mail. Microsoft, as our story noted, is seeking a patent for its tilt-wheel technology.

But IBM spokesman Gorman, unimpressed by the difference in horizontal-scrolling method, couldn’t resist a friendly jab at the competing product. His company, he wrote, "would like to congratulate Microsoft for being only five years behind IBM."

[Addendum, 9/16/03: For what it's worth, I just noticed that a product review in the latest issue of Wired magazine (October issue, p. 92) lists one of the new Microsoft tilt-wheel mice, the Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer, as a "best buy." The magazine cites "easy horizontal scrolling" as one of the product's attributes.]

Posted by Todd Bishop at September 15, 2003 05:39 PM