20 Years Ago, Microsoft Changed How We Mouse Forever'

Gizmodo contributing editor Andrew Liszewski remembers April 14, 1999, 'when at the COMDEX expo in Las Vegas, a now-defunct trade show similar to today's CES, Microsoft announced its IntelliMouse Explorer: a mouse that traded the dirt sucking rolling ball for LEDs and a digital camera that could optically track the mouse's movements with extreme precision.'

Based on technology developed by Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft's IntelliMouse Explorer arrived with a price tag that could be justified by even cash-strapped students like me. Even better, the underside of the mouse was completely sealed, preventing even the tiniest speck of dirt from penetrating its insides, and it improved on its predecessors by working on almost any surface that wasn't too reflective. I remember getting back to my dorm room and plugging in the Explorer for the first time, wondering who had a rig fancy enough to use the included PS2 to USB adapter. There were undoubtedly a few driver installation hiccups along the way, but once Windows 98 was happy, I fired up Photoshop and strapped in for the smoothest mouse experience I'd ever had. Problem solved.

In addition to that game-changing optical sensor, the IntelliMouse Explorer also introduced a couple of extra programmable buttons which seemed unnecessary to me at first, but it soon became an indispensable way to browse the web, letting me quickly jump forward and back between sites. (Tabs hadn't been invented yet.) It didn't take long for Microsoft's competitors to follow with optical mice of their own. Apple's arrived the year after in 2000, and in 2004, Logitech introduced a mouse powered by lasers. Extra buttons -- lots of them -- would eventually become the industry norm, and companies would soon find themselves competing with each other to see who could introduce the most accurate optical tracking technology to appeal to picky PC gamers.

I can count on my fingers the number of times a technology has thoroughly improved my life -- more often than not they tend to complicate things as well. (I'm looking at you, iPhone.) But 20 years later, the IntelliMouse Explorer is an upgrade that changed everything without any downside.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.