Two More Kensington Rodents 

Buy Now

Kensington Ci60 Mouse

from £14.03 at Amazon
£14.33 from Dell

Kensington Ci25m

£10.63 from Amazon

Kensington Ci60 Optical Wireless Mouse

Nothing more difficult than a stubborn piece of sellotape stopped me from finding the contents of the box, the mouse proudly protruding through the plastic window on the face. Should you ever need to replace the mouse in it's packaging it's possible and because of this you have a good chance of finding the instruction sheet and CD.

It is matt black with a small grey stripe along each side beside the rubberised side panels. The dimensions are 12.5x8x4.5cm and it is certainly a hand mouse as the base fits in the rear of the palm and my fingers just reaching the front edge so that the middle finger can control the scroll wheel. This is a five button offering with the extra two on the left side having the default action of moving forward and backwards through Internet pages.

See also: Keyboards and Mice

more

Should you install the provided software then you can change these actions to another that might suit your style of working better.

So what do you get in the box, the mouse, the USB transmitter, two AA batteries that fit into the base of the mouse, unless your USB ports are extremely close together a redundant 1.8 metre USB extension lead as well as the instruction sheet and a CD-ROM with the optional mouse software.

In use the mouse works well even if you rely on the default Windows mouse driver, should you come from a corded mouse background having the freedom to roam without the cord snagging is a plus. Being optical you never need to clean the deposits of fluff etc off the ball or rollers but do remember that eventually the batteries will need replacing.

Doing my Internet searches found the Kensington Ci60 Optical Wireless Mouse at a best price of £16.84 from the link below.

http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=bsd&cs=ukbsdt1&sku=A1167070

Kensington Ci25m Notebook Optical Mouse

Regular readers will perhaps have gathered from my praise of the box above what was coming here - yes the industrial scissors are required  again - the impenetrable plastic that can only be entered once you cut at least one side and one end of the container and then of course you are at danger of being cut by the sharp edges.

Yes they may look good on dealer displays but the box used with the model above displays the mouse and still gives you somewhere to store items when not being used.

This is what I term as a palm mouse for no other reason than it fits in my palm. It is 9.5x6x4cm black with a grey underneath and thin grey line above the rubberised sides. This is a conventional three button mouse and while it is optical there are no batteries as it is not cordless and takes all the - small amount of - power it needs from the retractable USB lead that when fully retractated fits inside a 4x2.5x1.5cm container with the USB end only protruding by 3cm.

This is sold as a notebook mouse but there is no reason if like me you like a small rodent why you should not use it with a desktop PC. If like me the area for the mouse gets smaller by the day then a smaller mouse is one way of increasing it.

I found it easy to use and accurate in a range of applications. However I am initially puzzled why it is more expensive than it's cordless cousin when there must surely be more components involved with wireless operation. 

Doing my Internet searches found it at a best price of £10.63 from the first link below.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000H87IIC

More information on the complete range of Kensington products from the link below.

http://uk.kensington.com/