Five years ago, I picked up a pair of first-generation 3.x MS Intellimouse Explorers. In the business move on Friday, one was crushed.

“No problem,” I cheerily thought. “I’ll just pick up the most recent discontinued Explorer on eBay or in a store locally.” I did locate one, but to my horror, the crisp scroll wheel had been replaced by a mushy thing referred to as the “tilt-wheel.” The tilt-wheel lacked tactile feedback and was notably less precise than the clicky-wheel on my five-year-old rodent. In fact, it lacked precision to an extent that I was actually able to roll the wheel without scrolling the front-most screen window at all; the wheel simply ignored fine input and only responded to gross input. Terrible, and unnecessarily fingerstraining. Without tactile feedback we tense our muscles. The mushy tilt-wheel is a ruination, pure and simple.

Further drawing oaths from me is the now apparently industry-standard placement of the left-side dual thumb buttons above the thumb’s resting location. In the 4.0 version of the Explorer that I used, they were actually on a protruding ridge above the thumb groove – another recipe for musclestrain.

The mouse that I have looks like this:

Apparently, the large-size thumb-buttons came under fire for being to easy to hit, and the mouse was revised to look like this:

Several hours of eBay combing, and it’s this latter revision I can locate. I suppose I’ll order one, but I don’t have high hopes for it. The original version is the only mouse I’ve ever had that did not create unbearable musclestrain. I am not a happy person at the moment.