Sigma's Rotino: "world's smallest" laser travel mouse

In a refreshing reversal of pompously named colors, we bring you Sigma's Rotino laser mouse in, uh, "gross black." Sure, that's probably just a machine translation snafu but who are we to argue with the lingual powers of the almighty Google? Oh, and as long as you're here, you might like to know that Sigma calls Rotino the "world's smallest" laser mouse with retractable USB cable. Measuring in at 40-grams / 30 x 70 x 20-mm the Rotino brings an adjustable sensitivity of 1000dpi for normal office-type use or a lightning-quick 2,000dpi for you gamers with an especially sensitive trigger finger. At just ¥2,980 or about $25, can you really afford not to have this in your laptop bag? Also available in French blue or Italian lead-lead (aka, red) if you're feeling euro-funky.

[Via Impress]

[Johnny @ Sep 29th 2006 8:46AM]

If you're feeling euro funky you can buy these for 4.99 euro's in black. That's for how much I saw them laying in the store and then decided that it wasn't worth the money and bought 4 USB LED-lights for 1.49 euro each instead.

My laptop already has a trackpad, but I can't read the keys at night.

[iptydafu @ Sep 29th 2006 9:40AM]

What do you need 2000dpi resolution for? -A colonoscopy? -Because that thing's obscene, and it's going to wind up somewhere it ought not to be.

[teodoro @ Sep 29th 2006 9:41AM]

If you are going to rely on this much foreign material, try getting actual speakers of the language to help. Or at least a linguist who knows how to manipulate these machine translators.
Try translating the same Japanese site into Spanish, a language I know something about ;-). The color actually comes out as "thick black" and "thick white". I'm thinking that the word is most likely matte black or flat black.
But of course "gross" plays better for the humor. Best to keep the humor and ignore accuracy, right?
-M.A. Linguistics

[Kiryen @ Sep 29th 2006 1:08PM]

Just wondering, which translator did you use to translate that page to Spanish?
Because if you got "negro grueso", it's probably just translating the page to English, and then from the translated English to Spanish, which'd make sense, considering the words were English to start with.

And nothing says accuracy quite like a Spanish machine translation of an English machine translation of a Japanese phoneticization of English.

[Kiryen @ Sep 29th 2006 9:53AM]

I think they were trying to say "glossy black", went with "gloss black", and the lack of l/r distinction in Japanese took care of the rest.

[teodoro @ Sep 29th 2006 11:34AM]

Kilyen
Sorry, that doesn't work. This was a machine translation that came up with "gross". Are you going to say that the programmers who inputted the English word equivalent didn't know the difference between l/r?

[billflu @ Sep 29th 2006 10:12AM]

Now if only they could fit bluetooth in there...

[s. @ Sep 29th 2006 10:33AM]

I bought this 6 months ago in Hong Kong... ;-)

[Kiryen @ Sep 29th 2006 12:35PM]

I'm sure the programmers do know the difference between l/r.
The problem here is that the colour "gloss black" has been given phonetically. If you go to the website, you'll see グロスブラック, which is romanized GUROSUBURAKKU, which may be interpreted as either "gross black" or "gloss black" as Japanese does not have an l/r distinction. Given that the finish on the mouse in the photo looks glossy, I'd say the latter is the intended interpretation.
A similar problem will occur when you machine translate プレイ PUREI. "Play" is given, but "pray" and "prey" are also phoneticized in the same way, which could lead to confusion if you were machine-translating pages on, say, this movie: http://www.n-g-t.com/pray/

[Mr Satyre @ Sep 29th 2006 2:15PM]

This mouse has been out for three years already...as part of a USB adaptor pack sold by CompUSA here in the US. Looks exactly the same.

[LukeA @ Sep 29th 2006 3:49PM]

@Mr Satyre

Under waht name? I can't find it on their site.

[Lt_Ladle @ Sep 29th 2006 8:00PM]

what we really need are mini-mice/USB drives.

[Chuckles McGee @ Oct 4th 2006 9:35PM]

Really now, there are some things that I don't get excited about being minificated. (Gosh darn, minificated is a word, and I'll use it!) If you're going to pay $25 for some fairy boy mouse (no offense directed at the fairy boys out there) you might as well use a touchpad.