Thanko's new wireless mouse can be operated without a desk, but only in the worst way
You know when you flip over your optical mouse and trigger the beam a few times just for kicks, sending your cursor skittering across the screen? Thanko turned that into a thing. The company's newest wireless mouse includes media controls and so forth on the flip side of the mouse, allowing it to act as a remote of sorts, but it also presents you with the optics of the mouse for mid-air operation with your thumb. Sure, maybe it works great -- but we somehow doubt it. If you're hanging out in Japan at the moment, it'll run you 4,980 yen (about $50 US) to find out.

















Oh man.
-a thing.
Sounds like torture. or hell
...still better than 9" nail.
Imagine trying to play an FPS with this.
I know, it's wireless!
now that's what i call innovation!
Now, I appreciate that there's finally a company not using a Mac in its product demo photos.
This is one thing that may very well be a bag of hurt for everyone involved
This is illogical.
it must sense when it's upside down, otherwise it would be impossible to use. assuming it does it's not a terrible idea, but any gains over a trackpad probably aren't worth it.
There a laptop with an optical sensor like this below the keyboard instead of a touchpad - it's much smaller and allows for a smaller laptop. Reviews said that it worked very well.
why don't they just put a touch pad on the bottom of that thing and be done with it ..
Shhh....dont give my idea away.
Which is worse because you already have in front of you.
I actually think this is pretty cool for a HTPC. A remote control isn't quite sensitive enough for mousing around, and it's not really convenient to have a mousepad by every chair I might sit in in the living room. This solves all of that.
Logitech had a much slicker version of this several years ago.
I wonder if you could add a lens and a piece of glass/plastic at some distance to a normal optical mouse to use it upside down, since the issue is the small amount of space it tracks, and when you are too far from the sensor it stops seeing you so you are stuck to the small space with a normal mouse. Although you might also need extra illumination then, but that should not be impossible.
Or a small plastic joystick with a rounded bottom which sits on the tracker so it tracks the movement of the rounded underside of that joystick and translates that to cursor movement, as an impromptu gamingdevice, should work theoretically.
Uh yeah, you point, click, and then you need to figure out where to put it while you type...
If you've got your laptop connected up to your TV, and you're sitting on the couch then something like this might be kinda useful. Kinda.
youd probably want a keyboard to go with it
A keyboard you can turn upside down and operate with your knees, I guess.
@ Greg
That made me chuckle:)
The Thumbelina was way better than this pile of crap...
brings back the days when laptops had those knob control mouses. what ever happened to those?
Hp Omnibook 800 from 1997 has something that works better than this.
You press a button and a teeny mouse pops out the side, still attached by a stiff flex, which moves as you move it around in space.
It works beautifully, its the reason i still use that thing.
mouse fail.