Three facts have reaffirmed that view over the years: one, they have 10 times more sheep than people; two, it’s my mother-in-law’s favourite country; and three, a friend, on opening his laptop at Auckland airport last year, was asked by a bemused local: “is that one of those new Game Boy things?”
However, my blinkered view was challenged last week when i started testing the country’s latest export, the Swiftpoint mouse. the concept is simple: it’s designed for laptop users who are stuck for space but prefer to use a mouse instead of a touchpad.
The Swiftpoint is tiny -- no bigger than one of the buttons on my regular mouse -- but is ergonomically sculpted and surprisingly comfortable to hold. The buttons areoddly positioned, one in front of the other, but this feels natural after a couple of hours. The supplied wireless USB receiver doubles as a recharging dock which the mouse attaches to magnetically when not in use. All very neat.
It has some other clever tricks too. The scroll wheel is mounted on the side, so as well as scrolling with your index finger you can tilt the mouse at an angle and run the wheel along your desk, a feature they call SlideScrolling. Hold the left button while you scroll and the page zooms in or out. Using another button combination, you can define your own “up” direction for the mouse -- useful, say, on a cramped flight where your hands aren’t out in front of you.
I’ve tried a lot of weird and wonderful input devices over the years, everything from gyroscopic “air” mice to pen-based graphics tablets, but I always gravitate back to my cheap and reliable optical mouse. But now I’m a Swiftpoint convert. For word processing and web browsing it’s great -- the optional handgrip detection works flawlessly, so if you nudge the mouse while you’re typing it won’t move the cursor, while the SlideScrolling feature is great for long documents.
For photo editing it’s just about perfect -- the pen-like grip allows for more natural retouching than a regular mouse, and the high-resolution sensor gives pixel-perfect control. There’s no doubt a graphics tablet is still king of photo editing, but for me the Swiftpoint is a better balance between speed and control.
However, if you use engineering applications, the lack of a third button may frustrate, and the pen-like grip might be too much of a leap after years of flat-handed use. But for mobile workers, designers and anyone else looking for something a wee bit better than a regular mouse, this could be the one.
Swiftpoint mouse - £49 Stars: 4.5/5
Positives: Great for desktop and mobile use; they’ll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hand. Negatives: The size, shape and lack of weight won’t be to everyone’s taste.
