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Strengths: More comfort when navigating a home theater PC from the couch; very responsive; programmable buttons; different functions based on gestures; base can be out of direct view; beautiful design.
Weaknesses: Has somewhat of a learning curve; somewhat too "large"; some side buttons would be useful, attracts fingerprints.
Summary: 2008-03-08 19:54:10 It seems professional reviewers love this thing while consumers aren't too pleased. My opinion falls in the middle but more to the side of loving the innovation and being pleased with the implementation. Before buying this mouse, I used a laser mouse either on my coffee table or the sofa. Either way, my wrist would hurt after a while. So I was excited when I finally got this. Yes, it does allow you to operate the cursor with your hand in the air by pointing to the screen, or even not pointing to the screen. The comfort it provides is enough reason to get it if you couch-surf. However, I suspect the reason regular consumers aren't too satisfied is that it takes a bit of getting used to the motions. While you can navigate an entire screen-area on a mouse pad, when you're using it in-air, you have all degrees of freedom of movement. This isn't something you wave around like a magic wand. That's why the manual recommends pivoting at your wrist only. So yes, it does tend to lose its centering, either from the user moving too fast or moving past the border of the screen. Centering however isn't too difficult. You hold the back button to freeze the cursor and move your hand to the proper position. Doing this won't take you back a page, which is the normal function of the button. Other buttons include select, volume, left button, right button, scroll up, scroll down, and a touch slider. The touch slider is a little sensitive. Perhaps this is due to my hands. While I don't think I have small hands (can't quite palm a basketball, but close), I've found myself adjusting my grip to comfortably make use of the buttons farthest from each other. Needless to say, air mode is not for gaming on your home theater, but more for casual surfing and controlling your music or videos. There are air gestures that allow you to control the volume and mute. Once you gain good control of your movements, this is a very good mouse for general use on a home theater PC.

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