Induction Mouse
The other day I began having some difficulty with my mouse. The left click was becoming less and less reliable, which is to be expected after a year of heavy use. I decided it was time to retire my old Logitech mouse and start looking for a new one.
For a long time I’ve wanted to get a wireless mouse, but I didn’t want to deal with batteries. This being the case I started looking for a wired optical mouse when I stumbled upon something I didn’t expect: A wireless mouse that did not require batteries.
You may be wondering how this is possible. The answer is a compact Tesla coil that zaps energy to your mouse (may cause shocks, fire, hair-loss, and cancer). Actually that’s a lie but I couldn’t help myself. The real answer is that it gets power from the mouse pad (through the magic of induction apparently). Once again, to my surprise, it wasn’t even too expensive under $25, which isn’t bad considering you can find mice for well over $70 (the ones that have more buttons than your keyboard and a racing stripe).
This being the case I figured I would give it a try, though I was still skeptical. After three weeks I have to say that it has been working well. It seems robust enough, I haven’t had any issues with the signal, and the electrified mouse pad hasn’t set my desk on fire. There are only two downsides I can think of: You have to use the provided mouse pad (which has been working fine for me) and you have to avoid putting your cell phone or other electronics on the mouse pad (though I accidentally left my cell phone on it and nothing bad happened).
Update: Going on more than a year now using this mouse. As far as I can tell it still works as well as it did the day I bought it.