Put your arm straight out like you’re about to shake someone’s hand. Now twist your arm so your palm is facing down, and notice how you can feel that twist all the way up your forearm and even past your elbow. It just feels more tense.
If you experience wrist or arm pain from using a mouse in the palm-down position, Evoluent’s VerticalMouse offers a more natural, more ergonomic position that may help. But the change in position means a change in gestures, too, and that takes getting used to. Luckily, the Mac driver, which installs in System Preferences, gives you lots of options: you can program the three buttons under your fingers, the scrollwheel button, and the two additional buttons under your thumb. You can even program secondary features, giving the finger buttons a second job to do when you press them while also holding down a thumb button. Rubbery pads on the bottom helped it glide across our desks easily, you can adjust the tracking speed on the mouse itself, and a battery indicator lets you know when it’s time for a fresh double-A. It was a snap to connect via Bluetooth. We love all the features, especially the programmable buttons, but it did take a few days of slower-than-normal pointing, clicking, and dragging for our muscle memory to adjust.
The bottom line. A hundred bucks is a lot to pay for a mouse, but if you’re experiencing pain and you’d rather use a mouse than a trackpad or graphics tablet, the VerticalMouse is worth every penny.
