2P Slim-Mouse

(Review) - A lot of us are fond of the extraordinary desktop mice from Logitech and Microsoft, to name a couple of top performers, but notebook mice for traveling are generally a pain to work with considering their small size. Since a lot of us have large enough hands, portable mice are almost always uncomfortable. Of course, you could stick with your notebook's trackpad, but even that's not enough, according to Slim-Mouse. The company's 2P Slim-Mouse is the world's slimmest mouse that's available to consumers, especially road warriors for its comfort, portability factor and ergonomics.

The 2P Slim-Mouse is designed to fit in your notebook's PMCIA slot to make it easy to carry around without too much hassle. It's a nice way of storing it, but the PMCIA slot is starting to get overloaded. There are only so many products that you can store, and with a lot of companies with mobile peripherals that are gunning for this particular slot, it's going to be a challenge - for companies and consumers. The device is built from metal, making it solid and robust, yet a little stubborn. We had to push and wiggle a little in order to get it to slide in comfortably in the PMCIA slot. Had it been plastic, we believe we could've avoided this struggle somewhat. It's acceptable, though. In addition, the mouse is "foldable" to where you can fold it and slide it in for storage, and fold out to reveal the full mouse. What's interesting to note is that Slim-Mouse isn't too fond of the notebook trackpad, yet the 2P Slim-Mouse is based on the exact same concept.

Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000

The device folds-out to reveal the left and right buttons and a scroll wheel, but the primary surface is a flat trackpad. It's ironic for Slim-Mouse to lobby against your native trackpad only to turnaround and deliver the exact same solution. What's up with that? Now, now, before we get too carried away, we suppose there is another way of looking at it. We believe what Slim-Mouse is trying to say is that you can't comfortably work with your native trackpad due to its proximity to the keyboard. Every time you need to scroll through a page, you have to bring your hands all the way to the notebook and execute the necessary instructions. With the 2P Slim-Mouse, however, once you connect it to the USB port with a retractable cord, you could keep the notebook away from you and still scroll through documents. This would only make sense for multimedia activities, such as watching movies, for instance. That's perhaps the only time that we can think of where you would want to keep your notebook away from you, but would still like to have access to the mouse to fast forward or rewind through scenes. Even then, it's pushing its usefulness, and we don't think it's a convincing argument to get you to stop using your trackpad.

2P is limited to USB 2.0 with 800dpi, which is acceptable for everyday tasks, but it's certainly not designed to be a gamer-friendly mouse for those of you with desktop replacement notebooks. The cable retractable functionality works well, though we would've preferred a longer cable than a mere 25.5-inches. Not to mention, making the retractable process automatic would also be pleasant. Who wants to manually retract the mouse's cable these days? The optical mouse engine is average and just about what you would expect from an optical mouse. 2P's optical engine needs tweaking, as it doesn't perform well at all on a bare desktop. We suppose that's why the mouse comes with a mouse pad as part of the overall package.

All in all, it's your average, last-generation optical mouse that over promises and under delivers. It comprises of old technologies that are hardly worthwhile today. Sure, the concept is interesting, but that's about all it is. Practically, it doesn't make sense to spend $70 on a mobile mouse that's so outdated and only competes with your notebook's trackpad. It may be inconvenient, but it's not that inconvenient to warrant a $70 price tag. Besides, Slim-Mouse still needs to do a lot of work to understand its niche. It's not just about designing a product, making outrageous claims and hoping it takes off. As it stands now, if the company can survive this product launch (it's the first launch for Slim-Mouse), we hope it takes some valuable lessons from a failed attempt, and release something that truly wows consumers. For consumers, we say skip it. There are far better alternatives in the market that are affordable and deliver what they promise.

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