[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Mouse, R.I.P. here

[rgreen4]

Just as long as it's not a touchpad. A mouse is a one handed device with right and left buttons. Everything else seem as if it requires two hands to drag and is slower.

[Reuntes]

Most of these devices would NEVER use a mouse anyways! Cell phones, GPS units? They don't use or need a mouse. The other devices you listed are either extremely expensive, awkward to use, or both. Nothing available today or in your list will beat the simplicity the $8 mouse you can buy at wal*mart.

[rgreen4]

Which is also faster and easier to use, since it only takes one hand. Everyone seems to want to come up with the better device. There is actually one thing that will beat a mouse for speed. The keyboard shortcuts, if you have taken the time to learn them or happen to remember them. But they don't work too well in graphics files.

[redmatrix06]

Why? I disagree the mouse won't be going away anytime. I can't play World of Warcraft or FPS on touch screen. You need a mouse. Or an alternative would be a gun controller. But then again you would need a bigger monitor. Keep it simple my Techies.

[artdoll]

I too disagree to a point: may be great for laptops in your lap or really close but give my arm a break! Holding it in the air, reaching to touch a screen! Much easier with the one handed mouse.

[hermant56]

Been in the business for 21 years now and about every 3-4 years we see an aricle like this. I just smile knowing that they used a mouse while creating the article, the graphics and the website programming. And probably never considered how their productivity would have been affected without it. Will the mouse go away eventually - absolutely, but not in the foreseeable future.

[mpheadley]

Ugh! Another absurd "R.I.P." headline!
Try telling a graphic artist or a video editor that the mouse is going to disappear. None of these devices, except the laser air mouse (which is still a mouse in basic concept), gives you remotely any precision! Mice will not disappear completely when you need to go to the next pixel on the screen and the touch screen method instead sends you flying across the screen!

[Evildave]

It is interesting quickly people forget that fingers and hands are greasy, and leave smudges on things like displays.
Also, unless the display is laid pretty flat, holding your arm up at shoulder height to operate it will wear you out quick. Point at the monitor and ask yourself how many hours it would take for your shoulder to lock up.
Sure, there are better mousetraps. A Wacom Cintiq is pretty nice, but it costs a lot, and that's going to leave them out of reach for most consumers.

[mpheadley]

Ha! Exactly!

People get carpel tunnel now, wait until they have to do touch screen all day!

[djdjohnson]

Neither the touchscreen nor voice control will replace the mouse any time soon.

I develop touchscreen software for a living, and let me tell you that using a touchscreen device for long sure wears on your arms pretty quick. Can you imagine holding your arms up to a monitor for 8 hours per day? Not only that, but touchscreens have very low precision. Try clicking on anything smaller than 30 pixels square... frustrating, if not near impossible.

Using voice isn't much better. Recongition problems aside, can you imagine what it would be like trying to navigate multiple applications with your voice? "Select application Word. Click that sixth button on the third toolbar. Now move down and select the word 'hello' in the paragraph that starts with 'A long time ago.' No, not that one. The next one. Okay, maybe the third one." And don't get me started on what happens to vocal cords after constant talking for hours on end.

Moving to either interface would require a complete redesign of the user interfaces we use today. Considering how slowly people move between very similar versions of the operating systems on their computers, just how long would it take, once a good touchscreen or voice friendly OS is released, before it becomes widely adopted? I'd say a decade at the MINIMUM. And that's assuming it works as well as what we have, which it won't. Voice control would be a better replacement for a keyboard than a mouse.

In theory eye control or brain-reading interfaces show a lot more promise than either touchscreen or voice control. I'd give them at least as good a shot in the long term.

[rasmasyean]

I don't think touchscreens will completely eliminate input devices "on the table". However, I do see that perhaps in the near future, you might have an extra touchscreen display for a keyboard/control pannel and be able to make gestures on it (or a section of it) eliminating the need for a mouse.
The other thing I think will emerge are flexible LCD touchscreens that bend down to the table where you can call up a keyboard or other software input program. One can be a gesturepad where you can perform funtions similar to what you can do with a mouse as well as have "on-the-fly" sensitivity adjustments that will allow you to navigate betweens pixels precisely, or play games with more precision accuracy. Software input opens up a lot of possibilities that cannot be easily or economically done with hardware devices. For example, probably wearing those early VR gloves would be awsome once you get use to it, but no one wants to put on a glove all the time and pay like $1,000 for it.

[djdjohnson]

Touchscreen keyboards aren't a good idea. Without tactile feedback typing speed is severely limited.

[rasmasyean]

What do you mean? The "F" and "J" dimples? Maybe, but I think it will be better because everyone's hand is a different size and you can adjust it until you find the best size (and layout) for your preference. Also, you don't need to depress a key so that eliminates the mechanical delay allowing you to do more WPM...if you're like a secretary or something like that.

[djdjohnson]

I mean being able to feel the keys. Without your fingers being able to feel the keys typing will be slow. With physical keys your fingers can easily feel what to press. Without it, your fingers you rely on relative positioning, which is prone to errors. Your fingers get just a little bit off (because they can't tell where to rest) and registered keystrokes don't match up with the intended stroke.

Just ask former owners of the Atari 400 computer how well keyboards work without tactile feedback. It was a disaster, and at least that keyboard had texture for fingers to feel where to go.

[rasmasyean]

The Atari 400 is different. That'slike a membrane keyboard with little "circles" underneath the keys that you have to press pretty hard on the right srea to contact the metal.
Many people don't even look at the keyboard when they type and just let their fingers fly arround the keys by themselves. Iphone users are getting use that that keyboard and that is so tiny they have to "average" out the finger area to get the intended key.

[djdjohnson]

The iPhone is a special case. Because it is so small you can rely on muscle memory to memorize the locations of the keys relative to the device's case. Touchscreen keyboards don't have that luxury.

The application I'm working on has a touchscreen keyboard and it's miserable to type on. Because you can't feel the keys you have to pay really close attention to the location of your fingers. It's definitely not a usable solution.

[rasmasyean]

I know what you are talking about. You're thinking of the Panel PC's mounted vertically.
With multi-touch screens hitting the market and likely getting cheaper in the next few years, having an input screen on the table will be different. That's what I'm talking about. I think ppl will get used to the "muscle memory" aspect with all thier fingers.

Here's an initial device that uses these types of "optical sensor LCD" as they call it.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=2YKqzwWxbVA

[djdjohnson]

That's hardly a keyboard.

Point is, without a way for your fingers to feel where they are on the keyboard, typing is going to be slow and frustrating. We also like to feel when a key has been pressed; touchscreens don't have this capability either.

Rotating the on-screen touchscreen keyboard to be parallel with the desk surface (or even part of it) doesn't make typing signifcantly easier; we tried it and it was just as frustrating and slow.

The Atari 400's keyboard only required mild force to activate the keys. I have used it. It requires no more force than a touchscreen requires. (You couldn't use a capacitive sensor like the one on the iPhone because you wouldn't be able to rest fingers on the keys or it would activate them.) People hated it then and they'd hate it if they tried a similar touch device now.

A much more suitable replacement for the keyboard would be voice control. Touch keyboards just wouldn't work well. They've been tried in the past and they have already failed.

[rasmasyean]

Well, I don't doubt what you say with the current generations, but I think people will eventually get used to it. Prolly starting with the young as how they have mastered the sidekick and typing in thier pockets on a number pad even so the teacher can't see.
There is also a solution to the "feel". They have incorporated haptic feedback on some phones. It shakes basically. Psychologically, it makes you feel you actually pressed it. Technically, you can accomplish the same evffect with a beep too but it would be awfully noisy.
It's just a matter of getting used to it. I mean, do you actually believe humans evolved to use a keyboard anyway? There isn't any pre-historic weapon that operates by keyboard motions that gave us the edge over other species. That's the way I see it.