The Perimice-518R mouse from Perixx is described as an ergonomic vertical mouse and this particular model is aimed towards people with larger hands who are right-handed. There is a variation for left-handers too. It is a wired mouse and the cable connects to a USB port. There are also similar wireless mice available from Perixx.
Perixx is a German company based in Düsseldorf and has been around since 2006. They are fairly well known for their high-quality computer peripheral devices – mostly mice and keyboards. Their website details their offerings quite well and in English, at perixx.com
The idea of a vertical mouse is to allow the hand and wrist to be positioned in a more natural position so as to prevent, or to reduce existing, repetitive nerve pain. The 518R mouse does this by letting the hand be slightly more elevated than if using a normal mouse and in some people this has made a noticeable difference to their productivity, particularly if working for long hours at a computer desk.
The design
The mouse has a comfortable physical quality to it and does not feel particularly awkward to operate. The surface is plastic and the thumb rests in a hollow that has a rubberized and slightly ridged surface.
The device seems to be about the correct weight in that it is heavy enough that it feels like you’re holding something significant, yet light enough to move around freely and with little effort.
The cable is long enough but it is slightly heavy and may have to be positioned and routed with some thought so that it doesn’t get in the way of the mouse operation.
The scroll wheel feels comfortable and has a mild notched scrolling mechanism and features a centre click (but no wheel side selectors).
Installing the mouse
When you first plug in the mouse to a Windows PC, it should work straight away without the need to add a specific hardware driver. If you do download and install the software from their website, then it does set up an alternate driver – it is listed as Gaming Optical Mouse 01 and is made by the LXD Company, which appears to be the Shenzhenshi LXD Science Co Ltd.
Using the mouse
It may feel a little bit uneasy to use at first because you are likely only used to a standard, generally smaller, flatter mouse. One thing you can do is to connect both your new mouse and your old mouse to the computer together and just use one on the mouse mat at once but physically swapping over whenever you want, so that you get good practice with the ergonomic mouse but can always fall back to your original mouse when you need to do something where you need a more familiar device to work with – until you get more used to the newer mouse.
Apart from the standard left click, right click and scroll wheel (with wheel click), the mouse features a DPI switch just behind the scroll wheel. This switches between 1000 dpi and 1600 dpi. Unfortunately, there is no indication as to which one has been selected.
On the left side of the mouse, just above the thumb recess, there are forward and backward buttons for browser pages.
The software allows you to assign various other functions to the buttons. These can be single functions or there is the option of assigning macros – recording a sequence of keys.
In addition, there are options to adjust wheel scroll speed; pointer speed and visibility.
Within the software is a section for game profiles. There is no explanation in the user manual about how to set this up, but it appears that you can save the various mouse settings under each profile.
Conclusion
Like any other computer peripheral, you need to discover how it works and how to set it up correctly to get the most benefit from it. This applied effort can make a big difference, especially when you are dealing with ergonomic devices, where getting the right device and knowing how to use it can make a big difference to how you work and may save a lot of discomfort in the future.