OOMouse Is Built For Hardcore Office Users (Yeah, Seriously!)

Razer's Naga had an awful lot of buttons. But with all due respect, those buttons had a purpose. For avid gamers that spent the most of their time within a MMO such as World of Warcraft, those extra thumb buttons sure come in handy. But seriously--is there anyone out there who would actually confess to being an avid Office user?

The OOMouse is easily one of the most unique (and odd) mice we have ever seen, and frankly, one of the ugliest as well. We had to double check in order to make sure this mouse didn't actually first see the light of day in the mid-90s, but amazingly, it just launched this past week. It was designed and built by WarMouse, and it's said to be the "first multi-button application mouse designed for a wide variety of software applications, including Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk AutoCAD, Microsoft Office, and OpenOffice.org."

So, what does a mouse catering to Office users require? Apparently it requires 18 buttons, an analog joystick, and support for as many as 52 key commands, as that's exactly what this mouse offers. Supposedly, this layout provides a faster and more efficient user interface for most complex software applications than the conventional icons, pull-down menus, and hotkeys presently permit, but it sure seems to us that this array of buttons would complicate matters. Of course, maybe we're just simple minded fools, but this seems like a crazy amount of buttons to remember. We're struggling to remember Copy and Paste, we're pretty sure 18 commands would slip our minds.

It'll cost you $74.99, and it'll run on Linux, Windows and Mac systems. Anyone crazy enough to splurge?

The OOMouse includes default profiles for the five core OpenOffice.org applications based on 662 million datapoints compiled by the usage tracking facility incorporated into OpenOffice.org 3.1. These profiles can be easily customized to suit the user's preferences using the included OOMouse setup software. The setup and customization software is an application that will be released as an open source software project under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 in the first quarter of 2010. Default profiles for 20 other games and applications are also included; the OOMouse supports up to 63 profiles to be stored simultaneously in the mouse's memory.

The OOMouse is one of the first computer mice to incorporate an analog joystick and the first to permit the use of the joystick as a keyboard. In the three joystick-as-keyboard modes, the user can assign up to sixteen different keys or macros to the joystick, which provides for easy movement regardless of whether the user is flying through the cells of a large spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel or on the back of an epic flying mount in World of Warcraft.

The features of the OOMouse include:

• 18 programmable mouse buttons with double-click functionality
• Three different button modes: Key, Keypress, and Macro
• Analog Xbox 360-style joystick with optional 4, 8, and 16-key command modes
• Clickable scroll wheel
• 512k of flash memory
• 63 on-mouse application profiles with hardware, software, and autoswitching capability
• 1024-character macro support.
• Open source support software for creating, managing, and customizing application profiles
• Import and export of custom profiles in XML format
• Optional audio notification of profile switching with customizable wave files
• PDF export of profile button assignments
• Adjustable resolution from 400 to 1,600 CPI
• 20 default profiles for popular games and applications, including OpenOffice.org 3.1, Adobe Photoshop, the Gnu Image Manipulation Program, World of Warcraft, and the Call of Duty series.