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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!REM@MIT-MC
From: REM%MIT-MC@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.works
Subject: mickey-mouse mice
Message-ID: <17254@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 6-Mar-84 12:08:00 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.17254
Posted: Tue Mar  6 12:08:00 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Mar-84 01:33:40 EST
Lines: 22

From:  Robert Elton Maas 

Well, last week I tried using the mouse on the Dandilion in Pat
Suppes's office, and didn't like it. If I don't press hard enough, it
slides instead of rolls, causing the cursor to just sit while I'm
trying to move it. If I press too hard, the whole plastic mat slides
across the table, and the mouse doesn't roll relative to it, it is
dragging the mat along with it, and again the cursor just sits. The
expert then said "you have to learn how to do it right, like driving a
car". My reaction is a mouse isn't something a novice can just pick up
and use correctly, so it isn't qualatively better than
keystroke-cursor motion or other tools that need training and
experience, although it may be quantitively better in needing less
training.

More on initial reation to mouse after some other problems are fixed
so I can give it another try (after the CPU is fixed to not crash and
the software is fixed to allow copying virtual-memories around so we
don't have to spend 15 minutes booting from four floppies each time
the program crashes and the 800-page Interlisp-D documentation
arrives. Also if we had the fileserver up I'm told things would be
more tolerable).