Peripherals

Asustek's Mouse can Double as Storage Device, Gets Ruined By Form-Factor

The storage mouse is interesting as concept, but it's completely useless

By Bogdan Botezatu, Hardware Editor

10th of March 2008, 17:00 GMT

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Taiwanese PC vendor Asustek has released an extremely interesting proof-of-concept device, that combines a portable wireless mouse with flash storage. Unlike other manufacturers that are re-inventing

the wheel, when it comes to novelty in terms of mice, Asustek's idea might have paid off if it were functional.

The final design of the device does not resemble at all to a wireless mouse. On the contrary, they decided to ignore every aspect in terms of ergonomics and rather adopt the shape of a flash drive. The result was a mouse that looks like a thumb

drive. If you would like to give the device a try, all you have to do is pull your average flash drive out of your pocket, put it on the desk and mimic the actions you would actually perform when manipulating a mouse. That's not too comfortable, right?

The Asus MS71 storage mouse is unique amongst its siblings. It comes with some ingenious design elements, with one end held in place by a magnet. The small part of the device acts like a transmitter, and can be plugged into a regular USB 2.0 port. The mouse can recharge automatically if it is snapped together while the transmitter is still connected to the computer.

This removes the need of additional battery packs as well as external chargers, which boosts its portability.

However, all the innovation is useless, given the fact that the travel mouse is the size of a big pack of gum. It might be suitable for toddlers or children at a specific age when they don't usually make a habit out of surfing the web. More than that, its sharp edges inspire anything but comfort and it simply refuses to fit the shape of a human hand by all means.

The product is brilliant in its concept. All that it needs is some serious redesigning, while keeping its original functionality in place.

TAGS:

Asustek | mouse | MS71

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User opinions:

Comment #1 by: Manfred Baur on 14 Mar 2008, 13:00 GMT	reply to this comment
If the design changes to better fit a hand's anatomy I'm afraid it will be useless as storage device, since it will block all he ports in the neighborhood of the USB Port it sits in.

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