Occasionally I get a bit of a pain, actually more of an ache in my right arm.  It's from using a computer mouse too much.

I had a look around to see what other options I had, as I don't fancy developing RSI.  Looking around, and speaking to a few knowledgable people, I discovered the concept of a vertical, or 'handshake' mouse.

The idea is simple.  When you use a normal mouse, your arm is twisted from its natural postion - and doing this repeatedly over a long period of time is going to cause problems.  With a vertical mouse, your arm isnt twisted, and so the problem is averted.

This is easier to show in a picture than it is to describe in words. 

Try it.  Hold your mouse, and over-exaggerate the arm twist to get an immediate sense of what is happening when you use a normal mouse over a long period.

It's probably not a problem for most people, but there are a significant minority who like me spend over 10 hours a day on a computer using a mouse.

Which vertical mouse to choose?

Like I said, I did some research, and found a few alternatives.  The best-looking one out of all of these was the Evoluent Vertical Mouse 2.  

Unfortunately, I couldn't find it anywhere in the UK for under £70. But with a bit of further research, and a quick look on ebay - I found a shop in the US that could ship it to the UK for £40 (including delivery - the lot).  It was delivered in pretty much the same time it would have taken if I'd ordered it from a company in the UK.

What's it like to use? 

Installing the mouse is easy. On Windows XP it's plug-and-play.  However, there are a number of programmable buttons and settings that you can only use with the Evoluent drivers installed.  A CD comes with the mouse, but they recommend that you download the latest drivers from their site - which I did - and it was simple enough.

I like the idea of programmable buttons, and the Evoluent Vertical Mouse 2 has 5 buttons in total, and you can map these to do a variety of things (and even set up application specific settings).

Using the mouse is pretty easy and doesn't take that much getting used to.  It's fairly natural to get to grips with and within minutes you're comfortable with it.  It'll probably take  few hours of use to get completely used to it - but after a few hours of playing poker and using other applications on my PC - I've had no problems at all.

Rating

Overall I'll have to give it 10/10.  I haven't found any issues with it (so far, but I've only had it for a few hours!), and if I do I might have to revisit that score.

I expect that there'll be some minor issues,  and I'll report back with them when (if) I come across them.

As for my arm, I guess only time will tell if it makes a difference.  But it definitely feels more comfortable to hold - so I'm pretty confident it's going to be £40 well spent.