These are extremely novel ideas. However, I don’t think the wheel needs to be re-invented.

Building on what JayNix said, except in the actual part on the mouse, I don’t like the fact that they are eliminating the wheel part of the mice. I don’t like scrolling with anything that toggles or that requires the sliding of the finger over a surface. At least for me, I like the feeling of manipulating a physical object, such as a wheel, in a mouse’s case.

For instance, I think this is one reason why blackberries have become so well known – for that little track ball in the center. It would be nice to have more things built like this, such as on the side of an mp3 player. You would use the wheel for scrolling through the lists of songs on the device. Not necessarily like a touch screen or a scroll wheel ipods have become infamous for.

Meh, a multitouch wacom would be more useful.

I have did hands on for many of these a year or so ago. I liked the concepts, though definitely was not intuitive and a little frustrating after playing with it for a few minutes. I am sure some people had some initial responses to using a mouse, but unless it happened to be filled with lint I don’t personally recall any initial difficulties with a classic mouse.

As a left handed mouse user my dream mouse would be something like this philips.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/12/philips-puts-a-touchpad-on-a-mouse-laughs-maniacally/

The only changes I want is it to be USB, not bluetooth with USB charging. Also buttons on the side, and the little scroll sensor can be used as a middle button like standard wheels can.

I would buy 20!

I would guess the acrylic mouse works by Frustrated Total Internal Reflection. This is the same way fingerprint scanners work, and it works well with oily surfaces, so they don’t have to be totally clean.
I have to agree on the first one, though- wrap it up and ship it out, I want one!

They all look like ergonomic nightmares except for maybe (MAYBE) the Articulated mouse, depending on the angle of use. My wrist hurts just looking at the others.

I would like to note that with current mice, most of the work is done by the wrist and forearm, not by the fingers (Besides clicking and scrolling). With multitouch, people are going to have to be even more aware of how long they are doing these actions, and take breaks accordingly.

I really don’t understand this fascination with multi-touch. On a portable device with a smaller screen like an iPhone it makes sense. On something like a desktop it’s simply a useless feature to charge more for. If you are really having trouble reading text on the internet, which is what most machines are used for these day’s. a simple ctrl+ combo zooms in…

@1:06 mouse wheels not having momentum…. havn’t they seen logitechs offerings? basically on certain models of logitech mice there’s a catch that you can disengage and the wheel is free scrolling letting you flick it all by using a normal scroll wheel

@Ryan

Agreed, has nobody seen the Revolution line of Logitech mice? I’ve been using them for 2+ years now and love the mouse wheel with momentum.

I find mice incredibly annoying, they make my wrist and fingers ache and are inherently a bad method of input requiring too much motion and contorted joint angles. Trackballs are a bit better but not a lot. I’d personally do away with mice in favour of something completely non-contact, but I fear that’s a way off. Tactile feedback is not a big issue for me, providing the surface acts as I expect. Nothing worse than having to scroll stupid little wheels or faff with fiddly little balls (just to explain that not everyone likes tactile input).

Capacitive Mouse

Touchstream already tried this and went bankrupt. People need weighted motion feedback, otherwise they have no confirmation that they did something. I thought my totally flat Touchstream input device was fun to play with but it was useless as a mouse and keying surface.

Orb Mouse

Input devices that require people to hold up their hands always fail because people are too lazy to hold their hands up. The reason existing mice work is because you can lay your hand over it and get porn just by wiggling your wrist.

atanok

Not bad !

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In my opinion the future is in multitouch screens and not in strange periferials like this. People wants to touch what are they working on, not interact with it using antother mouse. PS mouse has more than 20 years!!!

These guys from 10gui have got a really good concept so far, check out the video below

http://10gui.com/video/

Filippo: People do not always want to touch what they’re working on; your fingers get in the way and/or the screen gets smudged. Plus, what Maj said — that’s all well and good if it’s a tiny phone, and you fingers can reach any part of the screen while your wrist doesn’t move, but that does *not* translate to a 17-30 inch display, where you’d be waving your arm all over the place, tiring yourself out just reading web sites or playing a game.

I think most of these mice have *some* potential, but agree that tactile feedback is vital as well. I think a pressure-sensitive combination of resistive and capacitive touch is going to wind up winning, personally.