The holy grail of Bluetooth mice

This past year my loving husband decided to get me a Bluetooth mouse for my birthday. I work with Bluetooth every day, so it may be surprising that I didn't already have my own, but I guess I was just content to use his "unacceptable" castaways. I have grown to love my MacBook track pad (the pawing action is to die for), so I don't use a mouse with my laptop very often, and I certainly wouldn't travel with a mouse, at least I haven't crossed that line yet. These details put me in a more relaxed quest to find a Bluetooth mouse than my husband whom, I have found, is quite particular about his Bluetooth mouse preferences. Anyway, this birthday present "promise" happened in January, and, until Thanksgiving night, I still had not received the perfect mouse.

You may think that this ideal mouse would involve ergonomic design or perhaps the right amount of buttons or controls, oh no! My husband had two simple requests in a Bluetooth mouse:
1) It must be rechargeable. Who would want to have to replace batteries... ever?? Ok, I can agree with him here. Rechargeable is the cheaper and potentially more environmentally sound solution.
2) It must have an on/off switch. This is where I lost interest. My needs don't require an on/off switch. My use case would be to have a recharging station that would keep the mouse charged until I used it and all would be well. Since my husband travels with a mouse, he was looking for the additional benefit of turning the mouse completely off while it sits in his laptop case so that he doesn't have to carry extra cables just to charge a mouse. These exist as you can easily find Bluetooth mice with an on/off switch.

Now the obvious problem occurs when you combine these two requirements; rechargeable and on/off switch. His arguments were valid and the technical point of view was even in line. Being able to charge your mouse and then ensure that it was ready at a moments notice was ideal, and "it's only an on/off switch, that doesn't require much engineering". But I was more pessimistic. I countered that there would be very few users as picky as him and even though it may not be a lot of extra cost, what company would add a switch if they didn't have to?

Well I am proudly announcing today that I was proven wrong. After standing in line at CompUSA for the Thanksgiving night sales, bringing home my birthday present, opening it up to charge for me to use in the morning, and then excitedly realizing that this wonder of wonders Bluetooth mouse was not only rechargeable, but (gasp!) also had a power switch, my triumphant husband trucked back to CompUSA to fight with the morning crowd and buy one for himself. We now own two Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 8000s.










There may be others out there with these features since ours had no documentation on the box that proclaimed the power switch, but this was a story with a happy ending so far.

Poof! Bluetooth

Bluetooth: useful technology with a lot of potential.
Problem: the average non-techy Joe is easily caught up in some of the hazy workings of Bluetooth (see the RadioShack commercial).

Scenario: you run out to fight with the shopping crowds to grab the great deals. You snatch some $9.99 Bluetooth headset/$100 Bluetooth headphones/$40 Bluetooth keyboard. You bring it home, open the packaging and attempt to read through the directions. They say to charge the device for 2 hours (damn impatience!). You watch the blue/green/red light as the energy flows. It's done! Then the instructions say hold down the big button, flip the doohicky up and down three times, and sing row, row, row your boat until a light blinks morris code in various colors. You make a mistake and sing Mary had a little lamb instead and you get an f-you beep from the device. You end up feeling like you just lost a game of Technology Twister. So you go through the steps again and sing the correct song: it's visible now! So you grab your laptop/cellphone/PDA and try to search for your new toy only to find out that the blue light doesn't mean that your laptop has Bluetooth/your cellphone doesn't support some A2DP thing (wtf?), and you have to type some magical passcode on both your keyboard and PDA and then hope that they dig each other just one of the times that you run through the steps.

Holy crap, you just wanted to get rid of a wire! Your new toy to help simplify your life has just given you the gift of a migraine and doubt that technology is really on our side.

Never fear young grasshopper! Bluetooth is not perfect, but not much is. Look at history, most technologies had their bumps in the beginning and the ones that got it together moved past that. The Bluetooth SIG has been working hard at improving the user experience including icons (again, not a perfect solution in my opinion, but a step), and working on simple pairing techniques.

In my opinion, the simple pairing would make the experience worlds better. Imagine not having to know anything about Bluetooth, nothing about profiles, not having to push and hold and wait, and blink, but instead taking your new, exciting toy, turning it on, and with maybe a simple push or touch, Poof! Bluetooth. *Sigh* what a wonderful world it would be. Until then, practice your right hand on red button twister move.