Re: Linux stifles innovation...

[Gregory S. Youngblood]

On Sun, 18 Feb 2001, Michael H. Warfield wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 18, 2001 at 12:00:03PM -0600, Gregory S. Youngblood wrote:
>
> > I remember being at a computer show in Minneapolis where a small company
> > was showing off this mouse that worked on a variety of surfaces without a
> > ball. I'm trying to remember if the mouse was optical or used yet another
> > method of functioning -- I think it was optical, though I could be
> > mistaken. This was in 1992/1993.
>
> 	I think you are correct here.  I seem to recall mention of some
> of those earlier devices at the time of the Microsoft announcement.  I
> seem to also recall some of the reliability problem they had.  I believe
> they were extremely fussy about the surface they were on.

In the demo I saw, they had about 6 sample surfaces ranging from
a mirror to blue jeans. I also got to play with the mouse on the demo
system and it worked very well. At the time, mice were about $25 to $35
dollars, and theirs were like $79 or $99. I remember thinking it was a
cool toy, but the price difference was going to keep it from mass market
potential.