Customer Reviews

Kensington 72121 Mouse-in-a-Box Optical Elite USB Mouse (PC/Mac)

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I have nothing but good things to say about this mouse. Kensington is legendary for the quality of their mice and input devices, and this mouse continues that tradition, despite its low price. The 5-year warranty is very reassuring, and Kensington tech support is unbeatable (in the unlikely event that you need it). This mouse is very comfortable for both right-handed and left-handed users. It is extremely accurate and precise, and works flawlessly with Macs as well as Windows PCs. I use this mouse on a wooden desk without a mouse pad, and it works perfectly. I've also tried using it on my carpet, on my coffee table, and even on my leg, and it worked great! I can say with confidence that this is a go-anywhere mouse that truly doesn't need a mouse pad in order to function. The MouseWorks software is arguably the best mouse driver ever written. My only complaint, and a minor one at that, is that I wish it came in an all-black version, rather than black & silver. Other than that, I would heartily recommend it to anybody who wants a premium quality mouse at a reasonable price.

Environment
This mouse was purchased for a new Mac Pro 2.93 8-core system to be used in a 3D modeling, graphics environment along with other Macs that have the previous generation Optical Elite Kensington mice.
Low light, Placed on corner station desktop, plenty of room.
No games are on the system.
Moderately low amount of text (typing).
Heavy use for graphics, drawing and modeling. Average day use is around 10-14 hours.

Physical (User)
6'2" (186cm), Hand span pinky-thumb 10" (25.4cm), medium-long fingers.
OCD about hand cleanliness, wash 12+ times a day
I have used mice since 1987. Many brands and in 1995 I switched to Kensington mice for all my machines; Mac and PC.
I have had 2 of the 4 button Kensington mice since 1995 on ADB port macs, they still work. I have had 3 Optical Elite 4 button since 2001, they still work. They all function well using the Mouseworks software.
Typically I use Left Click, Double Click, Control+Click and Popup menu function with about 15 functions programmed in Mouseworks.

Physical Aspects:
Kensington 72121 Mouse-in-a-Box Optical Elite USB Mouse is 1.5" tall comparing to Apple's mouse shipped in 2009 at 1.25". While many think of it as a little too tall you should consider that that extra 0.25" in the hump height allows clicking to be performed from the knuckle joint of the fingers, index and middle. On the Apple mouse I find myself, and a few others to squeeze and use the first phalange joint to click the button which is actually the whole top of the mouse. If you are aware of ergonomics principals and guidelines you will note that keeping fingers moving from knuckle is preferable to phalanges.
If you have a medium to small size body and hands and are sitting in a chair such that the height is not optimum for the wrist angle you should consider using a gel pad for the wrist area.
The surface is comfortable and the grip area on Left and Right is very nice to hold on.
The Left and Right button are conformable and so are 3rd and 4th on two sides. The scroll wheel is rubber like; it has good grip on it and the button on it functions well. (Swap Scrolling direction)
The Left and Right buttons chording (pressing both buttons at the same time) functions well. The 3rd and 4th button can easily be chorded by squeezing the mouse with the 3rd phalange of the ring finger and the thumb. The wheel can be depressed as a button to change/toggle the direction of scrolling from vertical to horizontal. You can also have an indicator in the top menu bar (Mac) to show that it is on Horizontal. If you kill that function you can program the wheel button as any other button, turning the 72121 to a 7 Button mouse.
The chord is 6ft long. I have seen a post about it containing lead. That is NOT in any documentation, on the box or any other place than I can think of. The concept is very retarded as lead is one the poorest conductor of electricity due to lacking of free electrons.
This mouse does not really need any maintenance. I just clean the bottom every 2days on a low moisture dust cloth. Keeping the surface clean helps a lot, especially if you use hand moisturizers, creams, etc.
I have never had any of my 11 Kensington mice to have any wire problem, alas, I do not pull on them and I do not hang the mouse by the wire or use it as a spinning weapon.

Software:
The Mouseworks software works great; it is the most complete mouse software I have seen. You can assign many functions and macros to the buttons and streamline your work. You may even setup different sets for each button for each application. e.g. In most apps I use Left Click, Double Click, Control+Click and Popup menu function. The chord left and right buttons OPENs or COMMAND+O in Mac or same as Control+O (PC) and Chording the 3rd and 4th button performs a CLOSE; COMMAND+W or CONTROL+W. But in Safari and Firefox I use the front chord for BACK button of browser and the back chord to close a window.
Some functions can make your life much easier. The popup menu allows me to enter my email address, (3 of them) with one click without ever have to re-spell it or copy and paste it, address, phone numbers and even the commands that are repeated a lot in certain software.
There are a lot of adjustments for acceleration and deceleration of the mouse so you can really appreciate that if you have more than one monitor and have mover the mouse a lot to go from one end to other. Scrolling speed is adjustable, so is clicking speed. Unfortunately you can not chord the front and back buttons together. Basically this is a 7 button mouse while Kensington could have had the software to allow more combination for chording to make this to be 13 button mouse.
To make the easiest path for installation your best bet for this mouse is to download and install the newest version of it first and repair permissions, then restart. It is 3.0 for Mac and it works with Mac OS X 10.4.11-10.6.2. The CD version that comes with it is not going to work with the Mac Pros and new iMacs.


Conclusion:
I recommend this mouse to anyone who wants to be able to make their hand to have less repetitive tiring. Faster function and less stress. The software is very easy to set up and expand. You can even setup the mouse on one Mac and then copy 2 files to another mac and reboot and have the same software setup for both.
[...]

I love this mouse, and I love this company. They really "get" it, from design, to drivers, and most importantly, service.

This mouse is comfortable, and addresses the only flaw of its predecessor (a tendancy to slip when pressing the side buttons on the body of the mouse). I bought that one the day they announced Mac OS X drivers and threw the other mouse I had (rhymes with "blech") in a drawer.

This mouse has all the buttons you could want, but not to a ridiculous extreme, and supports "chording" where you can assign additional functionality to multiple-button presses (i.e., both main buttons at once).

Buy this mouse instead of some other company's!

If you write a comment in your registration form on line, you may get a response from a Kensington executive, a sign of a clueful company.

I recently purchased this item to replace a dying mouse. I am used to using a 5-button mouse for tasks, so I thought this would be a suitable replacement. I installed the provided software, which is required to customize the programmable buttons, and that is where I ran into my problem. Without the software, the mouse functions normally. However, as another reviewer mentioned, the provided software caused a delay between clicking the mouse button and the mouse button being recognized as having been clicked. This causes major issues, and these two examples demonstrate it: 1) If you wish to highlight/select text, you will miss the whole beginning of the selection unless you click, wait, and then drag to select the rest of the text. 2) If you wish to drag an icon, your computer will not recognize the "click" until you have already begun dragging, instead causing a selection box nearby to be created.

So, I decided to call Kensington technical support, and this is where the story really reaches its climax. I am greeted by an outsourced technical rep and I describe how I recently purchased this mouse, but that I have a functionality problem. I then provided him with the model and serial number of my mouse. He asks when I purchased it and I told him it was within the last week. He proceeded to tell me that I should just return it. I asked him to repeat that, since I was astounded by the prompt direction to return it. He again said I should return it to the vendor. I asked him if he would like to hear the specifics of my problem, since all I had said up to that point was that I had an issue with the functionality of the mouse. He told me that he did not want to hear the specifics and that the device must be defective if I just purchased it and it is not working as I expect it to work.

Hence, it's on its way back and I will never buy again from this company that seems to value its products at a level that does not even warrant listening to technical problems. I guess when you stop providing driver and software updates for a product almost 5 years ago, you shouldn't keep making new ones to sell. I strongly recommend anyone looking for a mouse with programmable buttons stay away from this one. It's fine if you just need a basic mouse, but the software will cripple it. Spend a few extra dollars and buy something that will work better and is supported by the company that makes it.

I bought this mouse to use with my Macpro, partly because of the glowing reviews, which specifically mentioned really great tech support. I soon needed it, as the software CD that came with it would not run on my computer. I downloaded the newest version from the net, but was unable to find it in applications once it was installed. At this point I should mention I am an old lady of 63 who uses the computer for message boards and googling. I know nothing about this technical stuff. So I called tech support, fully expecting to be talked through it by someone knowledgeable. He got me as far as programming the five buttons. I wanted buttons three and four to page back and page forward. The drop down menus for the two buttons did not contain that option. The fellow at tech support said that this was an issue with OSX.5 and above, and that I would have to wait for two weeks for a new software application to come out, at which point I could download it and try again.

After I hung up the phone, I checked the diagram in preferences again, and in the drop-down menus for buttons three and four, I noticed an option for "keystroke." I am no computer geek.... but I know how to cut and paste using keyboard commands, and I recognised "keystroke"....and I wondered if possibly that option would allow me to program the mouse buttons to obey a keyboard command. WAS there a keyboard command for page forward and page back? I googled "safari browser window and menu shortcuts," and found: "Delete key: Go Back, and Shift-Delete key: Go Forward." So I went back to the mouseworks preferences and typed it in, and darned if I hadn't successfully programmed those buttons!

I called them back to let them know I had solved the problem on my own, and explained how I did it, in case any other Mac users called in on what they had told me was an ongoing issue. I'm not sure they understood quite how I did it, I didn't hear any "AHA!" reaction on the other end..but I did my best to explain it to the brains at Kensington Technical support. There wasn't any glowing "thank you" or " I'm sorry you had to figure it out yourself after we failed to help"... but I think perhaps they were a wee bit embarrassed. I do know my mouse is paging forward and back just like I want it to, so I'm happy. I just hope I never need technical support again.

The mouse seems to work fine, but I still question why the experts at Kensington were so ignorant that they couldn't figure out in fifteen minutes-- with a technical manual-- what a computer-ignorant old lady managed to figure out in three minutes with a little bit of logic. I'm still in shock, I didn't know I was that good. :-)

So--my review at this point--mouse working great, tech support not so much.

I've used Kensington products in the past, including a much older 'mouse-in-a-box' mouse years ago, so when I got a new computer and didn't like the mouse it came with, I started searching for a new mouse.

I found this, the Kensington Mouse-in-a-Box Optical Elite USB Mouse and thought I'd try it. The mouse has a nice solid feel, and for my medium-to-large male hands, it fits nice.

But then I installed the MouseWorks software. Or, at least I tried to install the software...which is when I learned that MouseWorks isn't supported under Mac OS X 10.6.4. You can install the software, and open/run the MouseWorks software...but it tells you there's no driver installed and no Kensington mouse attached.

So I contacted Kensington support. They sent me a long list of instructions that required uninstalling the software, multiple reboots, disconnecting and reconnecting the mouse, and downloading and installing 'new' MouseWorks software (which was the same version I'd reported the problem with), and still it didn't work. It took a week of back and forth messages to Kensington support for them to admit that their MouseWorks software didn't work with Mac OS X 10.6.4, and that the latest version of the MouseWorks software was released in 2006, and they were no longer updating the software, and so sorry, that's the way it is.

Now, the mouse itself works, and the right and left buttons work, and the scroll wheel works. So the mouse is usable, but you can't program the buttons.

Oh, and I run BootCamp with Windows 7...and guess what? MouseWorks isn't supported for Windows 7 either, so you PC owners can stop laughing at the Macintosh owners.

The mouse has a nice feel too it, which is why it got two stars.

But you can forget about the extra buttons.

Excellent all-around. I wanted a programmable multi-button mouse - comfortable and reliable - and got it. Comfortable, the 4 buttons are programmable for common one touch functions, and functions efficiently and cleanly. Scroll wheel is adjustable and works well. I've tried other mice - at work, other computers - and haven't found another I like anywhere near as much -- and most cost multiples of this one. My only wish is an identical mouse that's wireless -- maybe it exists and I've missed it. But for a wired mouse I can't imagine one I'd like better. Kensington got it right.

At this time it appears that this is the last Kensington five button wired mouse that has the No. 4 and 5 buttons on opposite sides. Everything else has them both the left side.

It functions well, but Kensington is having trouble again with their micro switch supplier. After a while one of the buttons will start doing anything but what is intended.

At this point I am on my fourth one . Fortunately Kensington's customer service will immediately send out a replacement. They have offered me a comparable mouse to use until the problem is resolved. Unfortunately they do not make a comparable mouse that I can use.

I would entertain the idea of changing brands if someone else offered software as flexible as Kensington's.

One thing is for sure, they stand behind their products. The five-year warranty does not hurt, either.

Terrible company

If you ever have problems with something as simple as a mouse, you'll barely be able to understand the technical support, and customer service will hang up on you when you try to talk with a super visor. If you dial 0 at their menu you'll get someone that speaks native English. This works once in a while with various companies.

I just bought this mouse and it claims to have PS/2 support on the box in in the description from new egg. Fortunately, amazon corrected the description.

When talking to technical support, on why it doesn't come with a PS/2 adapter which is clearly shown on the box. There answer is this module has been discontinued, and it was a "problem with the marketing".

I ordered this mouse for someone else, now its going to take weeks for them them to receive my old mouse and send me a new one.

If you want to be annoyed, deal with this company.

NOTE: THE SOFTWARE FOR THIS MOUSE DOES NOT WORK WITH WINDOWS 7!

The only reason this mouse does not get 5 stars is because the software does not work under Windows 7 (and the company apparantly has no plans to update it). I require a mouse with programmable buttons for my job and without the software you cannot reprogram the buttons. I spilled a drink in my old mouse and needed a new one in a hurry and didn't bother to read up on this like I should have.

The mouse actually felt really good and was a perfect weight and buttons were easy to use. It's ashame they are no longer updating the software!