3D mouse is light for notebooks

3D Connexion has now brought out a lighter 3D mouse for notebooks, half the weight of its desktop counterpart, the SpaceNavigator

. Having just tried one, we can report that it is just as good as manipulating 3D models, Google Earth, and now PDF pages, while being small and light enough to pop in the laptop bag. The beauty of these devices is that they allow designers to manipulate 3D models intuitively, left hand to move the model around and right hand on the conventional mouse or notebook pad to do things to the model. The mouse allows the user to pan, zoom and rotate models, without having to think about it, and takes very little getting used to. It works with all major 3D and CAD packages including Photoshop CS3 Extended and Acrobat 3D, Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD, 3ds Max and Maya, Blender, Catia, Google Earth, Sketchup, Microsoft Virtual Earth, NX, Pro/Engineer and SolidWorks. It is supported by all major operating systems including Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Macintosh OS X 10.4.6 or later, and Linux WS 3, SuSE 9.0 or later. Suggested retail price is £90 ex VAT. For more information: www.3Dconnexion.com