OpenOfficeMouse has frankly preposterous 18 buttons, joystick

By Nick Hide on 07 November 2009, 3:17pm

And now, a heart-warming tale of a dream come true. One day, a World of Warcraft-loving gamer decided he just couldn't take it any more. His mouse just didn't have enough buttons to deploy all his l33t skillz. He'd do something about it, just you watch. He'd make his own mouse, and it would have 18 buttons, 63 programmable profiles and an analogue joystick. He'd team up with OpenOffice to give it brand recognition and a grown-up use. It would be called OpenOfficeMouse.

Yes, it's real. No, it's not a joke, or a hilarious over-reaction to Apple's spartan Magic Mouse. The anonymous gamer has setup his own company, called WarMouse, and this is its first product. It's about to go into production and it will set you back $75 (£45). That might sound excessive for a mouse, but in comparison with products such as Razer's Mamba (£100), Logitech's G9 (around £50) and Microsoft's Sidewinder X8 (£50), it's good value, offering far greater customisability.

Whether it will be well-built or usable is another matter. It seems like a lot of components to go wrong in one device. Plus, it's all very well the mouse having 512k of on-board memory, but you have to remember which functions you've assigned to all those buttons to get the most out of this. We can barely remember, cut, copy and paste on our trusty Logitech MX610 -- imagine assigning a whole level 80 Hunter build to one hand.

But the best of luck to him, whoever he is. We look forward to testing it. In the meantime, read more at the OpenOfficeMouse blog.