Product Reviews

The basic design of the mouse has remained unchanged since its invention by Douglas Engelbart in 1967, but its limitations are exposed by modern 3D and photo-editing software. 3DConnexion's Space Navigator attempts to remedy this situation by adding myriad extra controls to the essentially 2D left/right-up/down-click controls of the traditional mouse. It immediately impresses with its build quality, but it's in use that this 'mouse' really excels. It takes a while to get used to it, but if you spend a lot of time in 3D apps, use Photoshop CS2/CS3 or Google Earth a lot its ability to zoom, pan, tilt and roll all at once is a real boon. The major caveat is that its uses aren't universal - you have to be using one of the supported applications for it to work at all.