Released in November 2002, Masamune Shirow and the creator of the Gundam universe were commissioned to design a series of optical mice by manufacturer Elecom. These mice, fashioned in a futuristic style, are somewhat hard to come by, and carry a hefty price tag when you find them. I picked up the silver version of Shirow's mouse, and found it to be a bit smaller than I expected it to be. In addition to the software, each mouse comes with a little booklet where Shirow describes the work involved in designing the mouse and what he was thinking in doing it. Unfortunately I don't read a whit of Japanese, so I have no idea what's being said.
A note on installing this mouse, you really don't want to try and run multiple mice with this mouse's drivers installed on a US Windows-based PC, strange things happen. I use a Logitech Cordless Elite Duo on Win2000 as my primary mouse/keyboard/OS setup, and after installing the new mouse and rebooting, any movement of the wireless mouse threw it into a frenzy, popping up right-click menus everywhere and jittering across the screen. Needless to say, I prefer my wireless setup and thus uninstalled the M.A.P.P. mouse drivers immediately. Not to mention, of course, that all the installed components are in Japanese and as such setting it up takes some guesswork on an English language install of Windows.
I think that if I did go back to a hard-wired setup, I would use the M.A.P.P. mouse over my older Intellimouse Optical, because I find it more comfortable, and I really need to make use of it after how much I paid...
