I think the mouse is perhaps one of the greatest computer related inventions ever. I’ve recently read articles declaring the death of the mouse and praising the track pad or touch screen. Bah!
Simply put, on a desktop computer, no other input device gets me to where I want to be on the screen as accurately and as fast as a mouse. I’ve been using my Microsoft Wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0 (pictured on the left) for many years now (10 + years?), I love it. I even recently replaced the wheel portion from a broken one I had.
Just try control + right click + drag all the way across 3 monitors with a track pad. Or resizing controls when designing a window. Pixel by pixel image manipulation. There are many examples of how a track pad, pointer, or touch screen just doesn’t cut it.
One of the ways you make your mouse even better is to utilize some of the mouse related software I’ve come across in my travels of the internet.
Note: I have not tried all of the software listed below. You’ll need to evaluate them individually to see if they meet your needs. I’m currently using Synergy, mainly because the other machine I want to control is a Mac.
Feb 2013: I used to use ShareMouse for controlling the Mac from the PC, but the most recent recent version (1.0.92) won’t install and the Mac/Windows versions won’t connect to each other. I went to their website and found some information about it, but when I tried to log in I found I was banned from their site. Reason given for ban: “Has indicated no interest”. I no longer recommend ShareMouse.
Edgeless 2
Wrap Mouse Pointer Around The Screen. There are also several other mouse related programs here.
Free
http://www.fxc.btinternet.co.uk/assistive.htm
Input Director
Share Keyboard And Mouse Between Multiple Computers. Windows only.
Free
http://www.inputdirector.com/index.html
Mouse without Borders
Mouse without Borders Controls Upto 4 PCs With Single Keyboard & Mouse. Windows only, from Microsoft.
Free
http://blogs.technet.com/b/next/archive/2011/09/09/microsoft-garage-download-mouse-without-borders.aspx
Mousenitor
Mousenitor helps control the way your mouse is permitted to move from one monitor to the other.
Free, Open Source C#
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mousenitor/
MouseWrangler
MouseWrangler is a freeware utility for performing mouse gestures. MouseWrangler monitors the mouse while Right-Click is held and keeps track of the movements made. When a set of movements is made, called a “gesture”, an action is performed. MouseWrangler can simulate keystrokes, or run programs and files to automate common Windows tasks (like closing programs, minimizing programs, saving files, and so on). For more complex actions, MouseWrangler can also be used to trigger external macro programs.
Free
http://www.joejoesoft.com/cms/showpage.php?cid=135
Multi Monitor Mouse
Multi Monitor Mouse (M3) widget allows you to warp your pointer across the monitor bezel and thus speed up your interactions!
Free, Open Source C#
http://graphics.cs.columbia.edu/projects/m3/index.html
ShareMouse
ShareMouse lets you share your mouse and keyboard with multiple networked computers. Windows and Mac.
Free and Pro Versions
http://www.keyboard-and-mouse-sharing.com/
Synergy
Synergy lets you easily share your mouse and keyboard between multiple computers on your desk, and it’s Free and Open Source. Just move your mouse off the edge of one computer’s screen on to another. You can even share all of your clipboards. All you need is a network connection. Synergy is cross-platform (works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux).
Free
Synergy
Unlimited Mouse
Allows you to move your mouse cursor from the right-end of your monitor screen to the left-end and vice-versa. Similarly, from the top-end of your monitor screen to the bottom-end and vice-versa without any stoppage. You can also move a window from one-end to the other-end of your monitor screen.
http://www.door2windows.com/unlimited-mouse-dont-let-your-screens-border-stop-your-mouse-cursor/
X-Mouse Button Control
X-Mouse Button Control is a Windows application to remap your mouse buttons and expand the capabilities of your mouse. Customization can be global or per application. The level of control is amazing.
Free
http://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/XMouseButtonControl.htm
WizMouse
WizMouse scrolls windows under the mouse without having to click first, enables the mouse wheel in applications that don’t support mouse wheels, and optionally reverse the mouse wheel direction (like OS X Lion “Natural” scrolling).
Free
http://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wizmouse-makes-your-mouse-wheel-work-on-the-window-under-the-mouse/