by LwEEs
Bluetooth Mouse for Mac, Revisited.
September 12, 2009 in Technology by LwEEs
On an article published on November 2007 I talked about my favorite mouse, long time has passed and I have changed
mouse several times. I finally found one that I like, the Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000, and I’m loving this little mice, I picked this one up from OfficeDepot for $30 while on sale about a month ago.
This mouse is lightweight, comes with a pouch for carrying it while on the go, and it doesn’t use as much batteries as other wireless options. The downside is that to make all the buttons work I had to buy a little software called USB Overdrive. Before I dive into details, let me say that this is not my first Microsoft mice and both of them were excellent, this is my second must have from Microsoft, when I get a new MacBook I always install MS Office then get a MS wireless mouse.
I chose this Microsoft mice over Apple’s Bluetooth mighty mouse because of the shape, I have no other complaint on Apple’s hardware, the Apple mouse works great but the shape is a bit odd for my small hands. While some Microsoft mouse are a bit too small for my hands, the Bluetooth 5000 is a perfect fit, it’s been a month since I got it and I’m already used to it.
This mouse has a total of 4 buttons and one scroll wheel, the regular right click and left click, one button for undo or back positioned right behind my right hand thumb, and the scroll wheel button which I use to launch OS X Dashboard. When I first start using it, I the scroll wheel button and the “back or undo” button were not working, this was because there are no drivers for this mouse compatible with OS X. I tried two pieces of software, SteerMouse which didn’t work, and USB Overdrive which worked perfectly.
After installing USB Overdrive the mice is fully functional and one of the nice things about USB Overdrive is that you can program the buttons to work differently with different applications. On iTunes you can set the third button to play/pause, on MS Word you can set it to undo, on Safari you can set it to go back to the pervious page, you get the point. In addition, USB Overdrive can let you take good control of a joystick if you do gaming on your Mac, the software is only $20 and they are working on a 64-bit version for Snow Leopard if you care to know but in the meantime the 32-bit version works fine.
One tip you may want to apply to your Mac if you get this mice, go to System Preference, Bluetooth, Advanced, and disable the option to have the mouse wake your computer from sleep. The reasoning behind this is that if you get both your Notebook and your mice on a back pack and you forget that your mice is on, it will try to wake your computer every time it detects movement. You may think that this is easily solved by turning off your mice, but what if you forget. I rather find myself with no battery on the mice than on my notebook.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask, if you like this post and wish to buy the Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 Mac/Windows mice, use this link
One question, does this mouse support side-scrolling with the mouse wheel? That is, does the wheel move side-to-side?
No, it does not do side scrolling. Thanks for stopping by.
Microsoft’s IntelliPoint for Mac OS X works fine with the mouse and it’s free. With it you can get all four buttons to work. I was a little confused because there was no selection for “Middle Click” for the Wheel Button but if you select “Handled by Mac OS” it works as a middle click.