A look at the Mouse preferences pane.

Well, I finally broke down and bought one. A wireless Mighty Mouse.

Because all new desktop Macs come with a Mighty Mouse, I need to be able to write about it for my upcoming Leopard book. So I bought one from Amazon.com last week and it arrived on my doorstep today. I wasted no time opening the box and setting it up.

That Mousy Feeling

Before I go into some detail about Mighty Mouse settings, I want to comment about the feel of this mouse. Anyone who spends a lot of time at a computer gets used to the feel of the mouse he uses. I’m almost embarrassed to say that I’ve been using the standard Apple USB mouse that came with my Dual G5 since I bought the machine in 2003. I’m familiar with the way it feels under my hand and I have grown to like it — even though it only has one button. I have two other mice that I use with my laptops; I reviewed and commented on them in one of this site’s most popular articles, “Mouse Wars: Microsoft vs. Logitech.” Although I have hooked up one of these mice to my Dual G5 in the past, I went back to the original mouse after a very short time.

Now I’m getting ready for my next desktop Mac purchase, which is likely to be a 24″ iMac. I plan to buy that with a wireless Mighty Mouse and wireless keyboard. So figured I may as well start getting used to the feel of the mouse by using it on my G5 now.

In general, the Mighty Mouse feels good under my hand. It has much the same shape as the old USB mouse, so it’s familiar. Apple didn’t try to go ergonomic (like Microsoft and Logitech did), so it didn’t fail miserably (like Logitech did). Instead, Apple stuck to the same basic design, which should make longtime Mac users like me happy.

Once configured (as instructed below), you can set up a Mighty Mouse as a two-button mouse. That’s what I did. Although the mouse has just one physical button for your fingertips, the mouse can somehow sense which finger you’re using to click. So far, this seems to work pretty well, although I have managed to display a contextual menu more than a few times with what I thought was a left click. Looks like I can’t be sloppy with my clicking when using this mouse. I’ll need some motor skill retraining.

I like the silly little roller ball. It makes it possible to scroll on two axes — horizontally and vertically. It feel tiny and insignificant under my finger — so tiny, in fact, that it tickles. But it works a lot better than I expected it to.

Configuring the Mouse

You configure the Mighty Mouse by setting options in the Mouse panel of the Keyboard & Mouse preferences pane. Choose Apple > System Preferences and click the Keyboard & Mouse icon in the System Preferences window that appears. Then click the Mouse button at the top of the preferences pane. It should look like what you see here.

If the options don’t look like what you see here, here are some things to check:

• Is the Mighty Mouse attached to (if USB) or paired with (if Bluetooth) your computer?
• Is the Mighty Mouse the only mouse attached to or paired with your computer?
• If a Bluetooth Mighty Mouse, is it turned on? Are the batteries properly installed? Do the batteries have power?
• Have you installed the software that came with the Mighty Mouse and followed the installation instructions?

The settings are pretty straightforward.

First of all, you can use pop-up menus to indicate what each button on the mouse should do. While I keep referring to a Mighty Mouse as a “two-button” mouse, it really has four buttons: left, right, scroll, and sides (two buttons counting as one). You can program each of them for specific tasks:

• Primary button is normally the left mouse button on a two-button mouse.
• Secondary button is normally the right mouse button on a two-button mouse. This is usually used to display contextual menus.
• Exposé – All Windows activates the Exposé feature, displaying all windows. This is the same as pressing F9.
• Exposé – App Windows activates the Exposé feature, displaying all application windows. This is the same as pressing F10.
• Exposé – Desktop activates the Exposé feature, displaying the Desktop. This is the same as pressing F11.
• Dashboard activates Dashboard. This is the same as pressing F12.
• Application Switcher activates the application switcher. This is the same as pressing Command-Tab.
• Spotlight activates the Spotlight menu. This is the same as pressing Command-Spacebar.
• Other displays an Open dialog that you can use to choose an item that should be opened when you press the button. This makes it possible to launch applications or open documents by pressing a button on the mouse.

The Scrolling Options menu enables you to specify how the scroll bar should work when you move it (not when you press it). The options include Off, Vertical Only, Vertical and Horizontal, and 360 Degree.

Three sliders at the bottom of the window enable you to set speeds for:

• Tracking is the mouse’s speed across the screen.
• Scrolling is the scroll ball’s scrolling speed.
• Double-Click is the amount of time between clicks to be recognized as a double-click.

At the very bottom of the screen is a check box that, when enabled, activates a program’s zoom feature when a key you specify is held down. You can further fine-tune the zooming feature by clicking the Options button and setting a few extra options.

Make the Most of It

Although you can configure a Mighty Mouse to work just like a regular one-button mouse, doing so would prevent you from getting the most of your mouse. Play around with the settings. I have mine set with primary and secondary buttons, Dashboard on the scroll button, and Exposé on the sides. (I don’t use Exposé much, but I also don’t like squeezing the buttons together.)

If you’ve been using Mighty Mouse for a while and have some tips to share about using it, please use the Comments link to share them. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be interested in learning more about getting the most of this device.