Customer Reviews

iGo Mini Wireless Bluetooth Optical Mouse Stowaway Travel Mouse for PDA, Laptop & Desktop Computers MSBTUER

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have owned one of these for several years and I love it. Problem is that Outside The Box no longer makes it and it has not been built for over 2 years now. Shoptronics is getting rid of the inventory that they still have. The one I purchased seemed to be repacked and did not work. Warranty claims with the manufacturer are not available so I returned it about 6 weeks ago and I am still waiting for my refund, which BTW was approved before I sent it back. Got a letter yesterday from Amazon saying that they would be crediting my card in the next few days. Will see. I do trust Amazon.

If your PDA is in its cradle or you're using it with a keyboard your stylus is a pain. This little mouse and driver gives you an arrow and you're clicking away. Makes an Axim x51v much more like a PC than without it.

I use a Sony Vaio X laptop with this device, the Think Outside stowaway travel mouse. The mouse works just fine once installed, but unfortunately I find myself uninstalling and reinstalling the mouse just about every other time I boot up my computer. This process takes me about 10 minutes, so sometimes I find myself abstaining in favor of the touchpad if I only want to do something quickly.

Making reinstallation even more annoying is the short "discoverable mode" window. To go into discoverable mode, you have to insert a thin rod into a hole in the bottom of the mouse to push a button. It's a bit awkward, but a pen point or the insertable tab of a pair of headphones works - I keep headphones with my laptop already, so this works for me. A little green LED turns on when you do this, and then you work fast. If you multi-task and forget that you have the mouse installation window open, it will probably turn of discoverable mode, and then you may or may not be able to resume where you left off. It's a bit of a race against the clock to install the mouse and drivers before it shuts off on you, but you can usually win if you shun all other distractions.

I don't have a basis of comparison for the battery life, but I keep two pairs of Duracell rechargeable AAA batteries in rotation, and find myself changing them once or twice a week of moderate to heavy use. This doesn't sound too bad to me, but I don't know whether others are better.

The mouse does go to sleep a lot to save power, but the driver wackiness never gives me trouble on wake up. Only restarting the computer (or sometimes hibernating, I think - not sure) seems to throw it off.

The mouse isn't slow or imprecise at all, not for me. It may depend on your device, but my Vaio X can handle a game of Diablo II via optical mouse just fine.

It's a pretty comfortable mouse despite how small it is. You might want to have your palm lifted over it rather than resting on it, or else you'll have to bend your fingers a lot. However, I mostly find myself not really thinking about hand positions and not feeling uncomfortable. I probably spend most of my time holding it between my thumb and ring finger and maybe resting the front of my palm on it, or whatever occurs to me subconsciously in the moment. It doesn't seem to cramp me up any more than mouses twice this size, though.

It suits my needs, and I just live with the driver wackiness for now. If the next generation of mice has something that can be described as "like the Stowaway travel mouse, only it stays installed", then this would be literally a perfect mouse for ultra-portable use.

At first, I could not get this device to work with my laptop. It was easily discovered, but the cursor did not move. Tests with other computers showed that some worked, some did not.

However, the reason was that XP does not start Bluetooth service if your computer is not set to start the service automatically. Unless you use Bluetooth regularly, you may need to go to the Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Services and start Bluetooth yourself. If you don't do that, then you can still see panels claiming that the mouse was located and ought to work, even though it is disabled.

The mouse documentation, which came with the product, did not explain this point. It implied that XP would automatically take care of everything.

As for the mouse itself, it's a handy thing if you do a lot of typing and wish to disable the touchpad where your thumbs tend to drop.

This is an excellent product that was easy to set up and works flawlessly with both my HTC TouchPro cell phone and my notebook computer. I couldn't be more pleased!

It works well, though sometimes I have a little trouble getting my PDA to remember it still exists after not using it a few days. Probably, that's the PDA's fault.

Well worth it for anyone trying to do serious work on a PDA. WONDERFUL product!

Stay away from this mouse, stay a long way from this mouse!
Unless your using your computer one, to no more than two hours a day, you'll be buying nothing but trouble, and BATTERIES! This thing eats the best batteries you can buy faster than you can replace them. Honestly!