These are useful for repetitive spreadsheet entry work, particularly with laptops that lack a numeric keyboard. You often just need to jump back and forth between worksheet, columns, rows, etc. Your hand would then not need to move to another device to achieve this. The high price is because businesses would buy these are not cost conscious if the device does what it needs.
The correct solution is to get an external numeric keypad and type the numbers with your left hand while mousing with the right. That way you don't get an ugly compromised numpad and mouse that gives you carpal tunnel. Logitech's subsidiary 3Dconnexion recently came out with a keyboard with separate wireless numpad and matching TKL keyboard for this use exactly.
@@straightpipediesel you are correct. This is exactly what I was doing when I was routinely doing accounting type work "in the field". This was back in the early winxp days and I had an external numpad I used for both my desktop and laptop. I would use the numpad with my left hand and mouse with the right. I would then unplug my numpad and stick it in my laptop bag when I had to go somewhere. Then when on the laptop I would plug the numpad in, place it on my left-hand side and use my index finger on my right hand to manipulate the TrackPoint on the laptop while numpadding with my left hand. Made for very quick and efficient work.
@@straightpipediesel Most applications that require constant input of numbers or large amounts of numbers to be added just use the TAB key. You click the first box/field, enter the number and hit TAB to go to the next field. This 'keymousepad' solves an issue that was already solved in software, 40 years ago.
" 'fewer,' not 'less' " I hereby award this video three gold stars, not only for grammar awareness, but for snarky wit, and a general "WTF were they thinking?" assessment as well. Perfect viewing for my coffee break, fewer calories than my usual bagel and much better at reducing my blood pressure and stress hormone levels. Please keep up the good work!
As a proud Minnesotan, I was happy to hear you use the original official name for 3M. Also, thanks for correcting the disgusting misuse of the word “less”. Lol.
@@googaagoogaa12345678 ... My dad was 3Mer, they had poll and then fixed results the CEO wanted red to be more exciting.... Ha.... 3M is moving mostly to Austin for tax reasons...
Fun! In most spreadsheet programs the Equals and Enter keys have different functions, so they're not redundant in that situation which is probably a primary use case.
Very special use case. But this is very good for instrument control interfaces. When you need to click around and enter some values, before starting the manufacturing process. This is absolutely genius. Canon (yes, the camera brand) had one of those, but it had really terrible numberpad (+calculator), but it was absolutely worthless as a numberpad.
I just love that you picked them up for using "less" instead of "fewer" as that really annoys me too when it's wrong! I kind of get the product might be of some use, say in a meeting for limited use by someone like me who hates trackpads. But can't believe the price, especially considering how cheap and nasty it looks. If it was better both ergonomically and cosmetically and made by a brand like Logitech I'd expect it to be a quarter of that price in today's money.
We used one of those in our lab so you could input x y z for the mask and stage positions from the laser shielded area out to the computer which was external to the laser shield. Lots of uses for these weird things in a lab environment.
when using with Excel to enter numbers having the mouse move slightly while typing numbers was not an issue because the cell has already been selected. i used this in the office during the oughties for mostly data entry and i thought the mouse was great. my only problem with it was the very thin and fragile usb cable.
You know this could actually be useful for some RTS games. I like to use the numpad for camera control over WASD and regular arrow key settings because it allows for more than 4 directions. With the mouse added it could mean you could control everything from one hand. This could have been a real game changer well playing total war Rome on my crappy little net book back in the day.
Maybe if they added some sort of switch that allowed you to turn the keypad buttons off (when you wanted to use it as a mouse) and more firmly attached the mouse to your work surface (when you wanted to use the keypad), this would've been more usable.
Yeah or they could have put a little vacuum in there and you press the switch to go into NUM PAD mode and the vacuum fires up and sucks it down to the mousepad keeping it firmly anchored. I actually tried to get a job at 3M once.
Had one of these in 2008. They were a common business peripheral made by various brands and unbranded. Their use case was exactly as explained on the box, to cut down on the number of peripherals you had to take around with you thus reducing bag clutter and weight. It's not something you'd use with access to a full-size keyboard, nor for extended periods of time. It's the kind of thing you'd bring to use while you're with a client or visiting a branch. It's made for working with productivity apps like those found in what was then called Microsoft Office. Particularly excel and access. In this scenario you'd use it an hour or two at a time. But they're also for sysmin and other network administrators for when you're working on a terminal or visiting a branch, server stack or for a much smaller number of businesses back then a data centre. In this scenario you'd use it 20 minutes or less at a time. It was pretty good for it's use case. All laptop peripherals in 2007 were a step down in experience from their desktop counterparts. It's the sacrifice of portability.
I still have a Gateway 2000 mousepad, fairly similar to yours, so that was a pleasant surprise to see. Anyway this novelty combo was likely marketed for those who used Excel frequently on a laptop, given the presence of the = sign. Though it still could've been argued to be beneficial to have both Num Luck and Scroll Lock on it for similar reasons, just as Model F keyboards used to do as well.
To be fair that seems to be about the best design you could use to make the product. If there actually was a market out there for it then I would expect it would have done well given it was designed about as well as you ever could with combining these.
It really seems as though this contraption could use some flip-out feet, like an ordinary keyboard. Someone could just flip it back down when they need it to be a mouse again
I've found similar one in a trift store, from some Japanese brand iirc. It's really rather gimmicky thing, it's not comfortable as a mouse, but as a keypad it worked pretty well for me. Mine is also much flatter and has a normal cable.
You stating 3M's full name in the intro really sells the product for me....I say as I watch this video with my main mouse being a fancy gaming mouse with a full 12 keypad on side.
I had a numpad mouse from another brand back in the day. It was nice because the buttons were stiff enough that I could rest my hand on them when used as a mouse. I don't remember if it had the plus/enter column or omitted it for a nicer width.
6:50 If you're like me and prefer the old behavior of backspace being a back button, you can install the "Go Back with Backspace" extension from the Chrome Web Store (for Chrome and Edge) or change a specific about:config setting (Firefox) to bring it back.
I actually looked to see if I could find one of these to buy while watching the video, I like unique stuff like this. Couldn't find a 3M one, but I did find a similar unit but it was out of my price range. It had a numlock key where the plus key is on yours and a backspace key on the top right.
A friend of mine who works at Google on Chrome told me a couple years ago that that was exactly why they disabled Backspace for navigating back a page.
The following quotes have been rated awesome: "...our friends at the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company" "...they actually meant fewer, not less" "...and as I move it around, the pointer moves around....how exciting..."
the usability of this as a mouse reminds me of the mouse the lady at the rental office used to have. it was covered (every surface but the bottom, buttons included) with rhinestones! nothing like getting stabbed in the palm and fingers by the sharp edges of those things while trying to use it. I didn't see any of them fall off, but I can't imagine they'd be inclined to stay put with heavy use.
Thanks for reminding me of the PTSD I have from that era where web browsers went through a phase where the backspace key would serve as the go back a page button. I lost so much work because of that. I am glad it is gone and long forgotten.
3M used to make their own computer peripherals in the 1980s, until they sold off their division few decades later. It’s basically a licensed product slapped with 3M brand, this is like those Maxell brand computer keyboards and mice! It’s not really made by 3M like Post its!
I like the idea of this, quite often I've had my hand constantly moving between the mouse and keypad, so having them together could be useful in those situations. It also seems amusingly like a ancestor to the MMO gaming mice with basically a keypad on their side.
Perhaps the layout would've worked better with back/backspace where the equals key is and "Numlock" where the back/backspace key is? With this you could then turn the numbers on and off easier. Although it'd still be as cumbersome and uncomfortable to use. It could be more useful for left handed people, or for gaming, though - if you have a USB socket spare for it on the left hand side! Just saying! (I think using it with the arrow key mode might work better this way too?). This could be a useful alternative to the WASD keys or similar then?
The biggest problem I have with this mouse is that if using it like a normal mouse for example with a palm grip or something then you are EASILY going to be pressing the buttons and also it is wide and flat and since it is designed to be moved around like a mouse the feet are slippery unlike those of a keyboard which are designed to stay put so obviously it will be hard to type without having to fully grip the mouse itself
The "Backspace" Back button in browsers is available through plugins. Also, the issue of going back and losing your work no longer exists. Browsers maintain forward state, so if you [ALT][RIGHT_ARROW] or click "Forward", you will have all the information you typed before.
Modern web browsers used to be able to go back using the backspace key; however nowadays it's Alt + Left to go back. The idea of the keypad mouse seems like a gimic; I mean if you have a netbook it would be fine due to having limited space, but my worry would be accidentally pressing number keys while using the mouse.
Never knew something like that exists. Although I did have a novelty "phone mouse" in the 2000s. These days I pay extra for tenkeyless keyboards, I'm a developer, not an accountant.
Now that you mentioned trackpads on laptops...I hate how newer laptops have large ones that takes a lot to move across it and often don't have a proper border and buttons that are properly designed. My Toshiba from 2004 (which needs a backup and reformat to be usable again, let alone the broken screen and more) had a small enough trackpad that it was easy to reach across it without repositioning your hand while being large enough to provide resolution...and the buttons are my jam. As a true laptop gamer (Counter-Strike mostly) it is still the standard I compare these new laptop units against with - a lot of these newer laptops have bad enough trackpads because they'd assume you to use a mouse with it, presumably because you have a desktop anyway. Unfortunately I don't...and don't have another laptop either!
@@flicsmo6838 Even if I did, the way I put my fingers on the palmrest (and use my index finger for touchpad operation) means I'm also touching or resting on the rest of the touchpad...if they have a proper hard border that helps, but the way the buttons are designed (some would only click when pressed on the outer edge and vague anywhere else) also means it's hand yoga time
Every numpad on earth behave like this when numlock is off. What would be the point of this toggle then? But tbh, this is not a behavior from the numpad but from the os Awesome find btw, I wish I had something like that personally :)
I am SOOOO HAPPY that you said you LOVE the Red Nipple too!!!! It is SOOO MUICH BETTER than a TrackPad!!! IDK why people don't like them... yes they DO SUCK FOR GAMING... but as far as regular use on a laptop, I prefer it over the trackpad, a trackball, AND adding a mouse on the side (which defeats the purpose of it being an all-in-one device, right?)
5:41 Re "an undocumented feature of the keypad mouse", numbers acting as arrow keys and stuff when Num Lock is off is how all numeric keypads work. It's not specific to the keypad mouse. Also, you can make backspace go back again in Firefox by changing browser.backspace_action to 0 in about:config.
Man, I so want this thing! bummer I can't find one. It'd be nice if someone did another. The easy way to solve the key problem when using as a mouse is to put touch sensitivity on the buttons. If one is touching the buttons, the keys are disabled. As to moving while typing, well, if one is touch-typing a keypad properly, I don't see it moving much. Edit: I should add that what I would want it for is for when I'm using Adobe apps. Custom keyboard shortcuts require using the numberpad, which I don't like having on my keyboard. Being able to have it on my mouse seems like a nice compromise from pulling out my extra-wide 105 key keyboard. 🙂
I had one of these at some point. I forgot when or how I got it, all I remember is deliberately destroying it with a hammer because of how useless it was.
Still use backspace to go back in Firefox. Newer versions have it disabled by default, but you can enable it by visiting about:config and changing browser.backspace_action to 0. Most modern sites give you a warning when trying to navigate away from a page with unsaved data.
That looks extremely uncomfortable to use for any length of time, unless you're one of those people that claw/fingertip grip your mouse (I'm not!). I was one of those people that frequently used the backspace button to go back a page in my web browser. I believe Google Chrome was the first to disable that, followed by Firefox. Thankfully it's a moot point these days, since my mouse has dedicated back and forward buttons.
The = key is useful if you were doing math in a spreadsheet. I guess also formulas, but at that point you'd be using the normal keyboard rather than the keypad.
Apple's Magic Mouse does I guess have a "touch screen", or maybe more of a track pad. Certainly no numeric keypad though. So I guess at least part of the patent made its way to production.
I can't stand when people say touch screen when something isn't a screen. Like on the ps vita or ps4 controller touchpads. At least you used quotation marks
I had Unia brand keypad mouse that connected over serial port. Fun to play with at the time but the dpi was horrendous compared to the original mouse that came with the family PC. $3 in 2003 wasn't bad for it.
Let's be honest, the best dedicaded keypad for those who use them is the one that have a built-in calculator for when not in use on a computer, now that's a useful keypad at any time.
Nowadays, you could just get a moba/mmo mouse if you really want a keypad on your mouse. These buttons are programmable so you can programs the buttons do a variety of things. I don't even play those types of games but the buttons are so useful for macros, commands,etc.
Looked like a nice idea but the moment you have to toggle NumLock meaning that you now have TWO keypads active and half of a keyboard and a bad mouse just made me laugh.
I found one of these at a thrift store and I had to buy it. It's genuinely one of the worst mice I've ever used and I always keep it around as a cursed relic of sorts
Additional Comment: if wanting to using it (mostly or) just as a number pad it could be useful putting some velcro on the bottom and some on the mouse mat; thus no more moving? You could then remove it from the velcro surface and use it as a mouse if required? Just saying!🐭
Jokes aside, I can tell this would actually be useful for productivity on the go, as most laptops at the time lacked a numpad (aka Tenkeyless/TKL) And if you're in a budget hotel with a small desk, (because your company is cheap), this is extremely valuable.
