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Your opinion of MS wireless intellimouse explorer

N

Night Blade

Senior member
Looking to pick one up tommorow, i've held it & it fits like a glove, but how well does it perform?

I would love to know specificly how it feels in FPS games, I currently use the old Logitech S35 PS2 ball mouse (3 button, no wheel), haven't found anything that comes close to it's performance in games. I've tried Logitech & MS optical (except the wireless explorer) & there's one thing that drives me nuts about optical, when I need to reposition the mouse, to move constantly to the right or up or whatever, the optical always tracks even up in the air... My question is does the Explorer do this? If I lift it a few mm off the mat will it still track?
 
Man, I hope I caught you before you bought it. I got one a while ago as an open box deal from BestBuy. It came with Intellipoint 4.0, and you can only use it as a USB mouse. That means that you have to use their Intellipoint software. The problem is that the software sucks, and it makes the mouse do weird things when moving at high speeds (like while turning in FPS games). When you move the mouse fast (any faster than molasses - seriously) the mouse will oscillate left and right in a small area (like 60 pixels). That means that while turning in a FPS, you'll just whip left and right. It is not just in the OS (like MS techsupport thought), I tried it myself in CS and it really sucks. You can only turn REALLY slowly. Then I started having other problems. The mouse would only transmit a button click while it was moving. So I had to move the mouse slightly while clicking. That proved a big problem for double clicking and right clicking things. On top of that, it squeaks (like a real mouse) when you use fresh 1.5V batteries because of the capacitors used. If you use old batteries, or rechargables (1.2V), it should be fine. I called MS about that, and they said it was just one of those things, and they know about it. Finally, the battery life is horrible. Versus a logitech optical (wireless), it eats batteries like nothing else. I had to replace my MS wireless optical's batteries every four weeks (or less). My friend's logitech lasted near eight weeks. In the end, I just went with a Logitech Cordless Freedom Optical (Keyboard/Mouse combo... the black one). I'm much happier now.
Edit: I forgot to mention the fact that the mouse transmits from well over 20ft. away, and the reciever tends to pick up interference from all kinds of things. To its credit, you can change the channel, and that seems to solve interference problems. As for tracking in the air, that's a problem with all optical mice. I've been using my Logitech set for a week now, and it has NONE of the problems that the MS mouse had.
 
You didn't catch me in time, but after reading another post about this mouse I kept my Logitech, thanks for the tips. I think i'm either going to track down a Razer Boomslang, or find more of these discontinued S35's, they go for like $5 🙂.
 
have you considered the explorer3.0? It's great for fps games. I think it is the best optical mouse available today. I had a logitech cordless optical but it drained batteries like crazy! and it wasnt as smooth as the 3.0.
 
i have one & i must say i do like it very much

the battery life is HORRIBLE.. i haven't noticed the squeaking Akira13 talks about - but the battery life is HORRIBLE (did i make that clear enough 😉)
but for me, the FPS is not as bad as it seems for Akira13. I went & downloaded the newest software to install.

Night Blade, your mention of "tracking in the air" finally makes sense as to why I suck more with optical mice compared to wheel mice (this is true of all optical mice, including my GF's cordless Logitech optical)
 
I've been using a _wired_ Intelli-Mouse Optical for a couple of weeks now & I'm liking it so far. I didn't want to go wireless, it doesn't feel responsive enough to me. It's a USB/PS2 compatible, I'm using the USB to PS2 adaptor. I also installed the Intellipoint software but it doesn't seem to make any difference in games. I've only played Deus-Ex with it though, haven't tried other FSPs yet. And the mouse does track if lifted less than .25 in. from the surface.
 
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