Samsung Unveils Slim 8mm Mouse

Samsung is taking the thin game a little too seriously. After beating the RAZR with their 6.9mm thin Ultra Edition phones, Samsung has now put their mice on a strict diet. The result is this new ultra slim, card-like 8mm mouse announced recently at the Korea Electronics Show (KES 2006).

It is a corded USB mouse with a plug that slides and fits into the front. The cord is retractable with a semi-automatic winding mechanism, like most laptop mice have—confirming that this is not really a desktop replacement—but a portable laptop mouse.

The mouse doesn’t seem to have conventional-looking buttons, but it actually has 5 buttons that can be reprogrammed. In spite of being so tiny, it also has a scroll wheel, but one that rotates sideways left-right instead of the usual back-front motion of most scroll wheels. To make it easier to find the mouse in the dark (for eg., on a night flight), the scroll wheel also glows with a blue LED beneath it.

The price is not known yet, but we do know that the mouse will be available in black and pink. I shall refrain from commenting on that.

It remains to be seen how usable this super thin mouse will be. Try holding a deck of about 8-10 playing cards and pretend it’s a mouse—it probably won’t feel too good. But maybe the actual experience will vary. It would be extremely interesting to see a PCMCIA-shaped mouse in the near future, so you could make use of those otherwise unused slots in your laptops, increasing portability!

Read more at AVing .