I blame the mouse wheel. Not the rodent treadmill type, no, I mean the little scroll-y button that you'll find on most mice these days. For years mice were the same design, with two or three buttons (or one for you lucky Mac owners) and a ball, and then all of a sudden we got wheels, optical sensors, pro gaming mice, and most recently vibrating mice. But until a little known company called AVB came along there was only Logitech on the scene with their iFeel mice. AVB took a rather different approach in designing their mouse, though.

Whereas the iFeel used Immersion TouchSense technology, the AVB mouse takes output from your soundcard via a little device that goes between your headphone jack and audio output socket. The mouse then picks up any and all sounds from your machine and translates them into mouse vibrations. The main benefit of this solution is that it works on absolutely any operating system you'd care to think of: Windows, Linux, Mac OS, BSD, BeOS, Unix… I could go on, but basically, if you are running an OS that supports PS/2 mice, the VMouse will be fully functional without the need for any special software.

The games test suite for the VMouse includes MDK2, Counter-Strike, Soldier of Fortune and Unreal Tournament. Were these games chosen after a carefully considered selection process? Nah, they're just games I really like, but then you can't precisely benchmark a vibrating mouse, so field testing in various games is the way to go. The Vmouse is pretty comfortable to hold, largely thanks to the raised area near the back that sits nicely in the middle of your palm. The mouse wheel button works well for once as it isn't too difficult to press (like on the Razer Boomslang) yet it does actually click noticeably (unlike on the Logitech Mouseman Optical). Unfortunately, when you scroll the wheel it is almost smooth rather than clicking through as you rotate it, so changing weapons with the mouse wheel in Half-Life becomes pure guesswork.