Aside from being a paraphrase of something that kept getting repeated on a certain Star Trek: TNG episode, this aptly describes the new Microsoft Optical mouse by Starck (or should that be S+ARCK) that I received last week. (Hover over the “Choose a color” link to see a proper picture.)

Getting it ended a slight saga, since I’d ordered it online two and a half weeks before that from ByteWize Computers. (The last time I checked, these weren’t sold in the stores I would normally go to.) I never got notified that it had been shipped and, being too patient for my own good sometimes, I waited longer than I should have before calling to ask what had happened to it.

I called the first time the Friday before it actually arrived. They said they’d check into it and get back to me. I called again the following Monday, and was told that it had been shipped from a different warehouse, but that they’d try to figure out where it had gone – and get back to me. I called again, and was given a UPS tracking number which still didn’t show anything because “it hadn’t been entered yet”. This was slightly strange since I’d ordered it so long before that and had requested regular post at the time. Apparently they decided to ship me a new one, via courier, at no extra cost.

Typically, it got sent to my house where nobody was around to sign for it. I got that straightened out, though, and got it delivered to work the next day.

It’s now at home and working just fine. I like it a lot better than my old one – which was starting to “creak” (or squeak as the case may be) and getting on my nerves. The glowing blue band looks sort of cool when all of the lights are off.

The one issue I had with it was when I first plugged it in and Michelle was unable to control it. I soon determined that I had the same problem. Since I’d tried it out at work without any difficulty at all, I assumed it had something to do with my computer or the drivers. About fifteen minutes later I realised what the problem really was – it was my shiny mouse pad. Since this is an optical mouse, apparently the laser light was bouncing off of its surface in ways that interfered with its sensor, making it think that the mouse had been moved in ways that it hadn’t been. I replaced the mousepad (which is a same, since it was a nice Escher pad that had been a gift) and everything then worked like a charm.