It's a Mouse, It's a Plane, No, It's . . .
A Review of Altra's Felix Pointing Device
by Ron Enderland
Wouldn't PC's be fun if you didn't have that stupid mouse?
I mean, the mouse has to be one of our least favorite pieces of hardware. Suppose
you spend the big bucks and get an ergonomically designed beauty that fits your
hand like a well-worn glove. Eventually, it's STILL going to get dirty and start
making the cursor stick on the screen. This will be accompanied by raised blood
pressure, bad language, and a halt to your on-screen activities (while you search
for your mouse cleaning kit).
What can you do? Up until now, you basically had two options: trackball or touchpad.
Trackballs have been employed for precision work by CAD users for several years now. The problem with them is that they have a rather steep learning curve for most of us, plus they will eventually get dirty and start goofing up, a la the mouse.
Touchpads have been popular on laptops for a while now, and have started making their way into desktop PC's. They, too, take some serious getting used to. That cursor will run right off the screen until you learn to put on the brakes with just the right touch.
Now, it seems that you have a third choice. You can get a Felix.
The Felix is a . . . well, you really can't get any more specific than calling
it a pointing device. It resembles a tiny stylized airplane on a stalk that you
guide with your mouse hand. It moves in an approximately 1" square. It has
three buttons 
that
you access with your index and middle fingers. It sits on a
base that is approximately six inches square, and is less that two inches tall.
Your fingertips fit instinctively over it.
A mouse user will pick up the usage of it, although it may take a week or two. The cursor movements are quite exaggerated, with tiny motions of the hand translated into big jumps across the screen.
Altra claims that the Felix will work with the standard Windows 95 mouse driver. I found this to be true, although it ran a little buggy. The cursor would tend to wander on its own.
Installing the custom driver helped a lot, although occasional strangeness of operation would still creep up. For instance, the middle button is programmable for a double-click. If you set it thusly, it will work a time or two and then stop functioning. Also, I had a hard time selecting cursor types. They kept returning to Windows defaults on their own.
In all fairness, my system has had about a million things installed on it in
the last year, and is ready for a hard disk format and a complete reinstall. This
may well clear up the little annoyances.
If you're running DOS apps under Win 95, then you may have to manually install the old 6.2 mouse driver (if you can find it). Everything seemed to operate well with that driver in place. Some DOS apps ran fine with Windows 95's driver alone, others didn't.
Using the Felix means reducing your hand and wrist movements by a large amount. You soon learn to master the subtle maneuvers that make that cursor move. The wrist barely comes into play as your fingertips dance through the small range of motion.
The custom driver allows you to make some very precise movements, indeed. I was able to use it in my drawing program to make some pixel-by-pixel motions that were sublime.
The unit is maintenance-free, is guaranteed for a year, and has no ball to get dirty. It appears to be solidly built, and should enjoy a long life.
To sum up, this nifty critter may well be the next breakthrough in pointing devices. I recommend that you give it a try. If you have driver troubles, keep hitting Altra's website for updates.
Multimedia Cafe Scorecard
| Product: |
Altra's Felix Pointing Device |
| Company: |
Altra
|
| Cost: |
$99.95 |
System Requirements:
Any PC running Windows 3.0 or later
Optimized for Windows 95
Breakdown:
Ease of Installation 4
Ease of Use 4
Concept 4
Help From Technical Support (If Applicable) 4
Promises Kept? 4
Overall Score:
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