Customer Reviews

IBM 3-Button Scrollpoint Optical Mouse

5 star:		(5)
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2 star:		(1)
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The Scrollpoint mouse by IBM/Lenovo is easily the best engineered mouse I've ever had the pleasure to use. It ingeniously combines the mouse and pointing-stick, utilizing each of them in the area they're best suited for; the mouse for fine cursor control and the pointing-stick for quick and direct scrolling.


Previously I owned a Mighty Mouse by Apple, but grew frustrated with the scroll-ball getting clogged. It seemed pretty ridiculous to me that after eliminating balls from underneath a mouse, that I'd be subjected to the same problems when they were moved to the top. Scroll wheels are better, but can't handle side-to-side very well and for scrolling through a long document requires the user to lift their finger up again and again. A touch-stick on a mouse seemed like a great idea and I was pleasantly surprised that IBM actually made one.

The Scrollpoint has most of the typical features one would expect on a mouse. It's an optical, 3-button mouse, that plugs into a USB port (or PS/2 with included adapter). The pointing-stick on the current mouse (the one in the picture is a previous model) has a plastic bar rather than the traditional nub which works better for it's particular application. No matter how long a document is, you never need to lift your finger off the point-stick.

I've had my Scrollpoint for about 6 months so far and might even pick up another one to use at work. I highly recommend it. Priced at about $25, it's inexpensive enough for you to give it a try.

Once you use a Scrollpoint mouse you'll never want to use one with a wheel ever again. I have two IBM 2-Button Scrollpoint mice that I've been using for almost 10 years and other than occasionally cleaning the balls and contacts, they've worked flawlessly. I purchased two new 3-Button Scrollpoint mice to replace my old ones even though they are still working. The new mice have the added benefit of being optical (no more balls/contacts to clean) and are USB attached. The mice also come with USB to PS2 adapters so they can even be used on machines with PS2 ports. I've been using them for almost 2 months and they are very comfortable and I've had no issues with them. If they work as well as my old ones, I'll be extremely satisfied.

I forget exactly when I discovered the Scrollpoint mouse, but it has been the only mouse I use for years now. No other mouse I've ever tried provides such effortless scrolling--light pressure, slow scrolling; more pressure, faster scrolling. No finger cramps. Programmable center button. I sure hope IBM/Lenovo continues to make them.

It is sensitive in linux, but not a major problem. I like it that way. The driver disk installs the mouse flawlessly in Windows XP SP3. This mouse is a joy to use in gaming, document reading, Internet browsing, every file manager I use (Midnight Commander, Rox, Free Commander, Windows Explorer) and every word processor I use (Abiword, Notepad++, notepad, Geany, Nicoedit). The click switch travel distance is just long enough. It fits my large (US glove size) hand perfectly. It is solid and sturdy, the 800 dpi resolution tracks flawlessly, and the intelligent design gives my heart a little thrill every time I look at it. I hate scroll wheels - arthritis. And a scroll wheel is a pain to click. It is wonderful to have that middle button as a separate entity for so many reasons - pasting in linux, alt-fire in first person shooters, the list goes on and on, much like this review. Okay! Thank you, IBM and Amazon, and my treasure, my wife Beth, for this mouse.

I've used this mouse for 2 weeks now, and I can't go back to a scroll wheel anymore. With a wheel mouse you have to repeatedly stroke the wheel in order to scroll through long documents such as forum threads and PDFs, which seems to me like an ergonomic nightmare. With the scroll stick you can scroll indefinitely in any of the four directions just by pressing the stick in that direction. The stick is pressure sensitive so you can scroll slow or fast at will.

This mouse also has a real third button, located right above the scroll stick. This allows you to rest the tip of your middle finger on the button for instant access and use the first joint of your middle finger to control the scroll stick. The real button is much easier to click than a mouse wheel, making operations such as opening links in new tabs in firefox much more comfortable.

The only flaw that I've noticed is that the scroll stick functionality requires software drivers to work. Since the only included driver is for the Windows OS family, the scroll stick isn't going to work perfectly on *NIX or Mac OSes. A quick google search for "scrollpoint linux" suggests that the scroll stick works only for vertical scrolling in Linux, and is extremely sensitive. I've even experienced flakiness with the Windows drivers, specifically that the scroll stick will occasionally stop working in Firefox and I have to restart the application to make it work again. This might have something to do with the mouse support software getting confused by the embedded Flash plugin process, as I've never had problems with any other applications.

The scrollpoint button was sticking in the down position when I plugged it in, and I was unable to get that to stop. Had to return it, and decided not to take my chance with a replacement. I dug out an old mouse I had leftover from a PS/2 and am happily using that.