When is a mouse not a mouse? The Mousetrapper Advance ($239) answers that question with a design that may leave wrists soothed but users puzzled, with a moving surface that looks like a touchpad but functions like a cross between a trackball and a treadmill. It's the same technology seen in the Mousetrapper Flexible ($239 street, 3 stars), and adds a better wrist rest and comes in at a slightly lower price. It's a unique alternative to other ergonomic mice, like the Evoluent VerticalMouse 4 ($99.95 direct, 4.5 stars) or Hippus HandShoe Mouse ($129 direct, 4 stars).

Design
The Mousetrapper Advance uses the same moving ribbed lattice that was seen on the Mousetrapper Flexible. Instead of a stationary smooth surface that tracks the movements of your fingertips across it, the Mousetrapper has a moving control surface that grips your fingertip and moves with it. The result is a touchpad that puts very little stress on the user's wrist, and requires none of the potentially damaging positioning caused by gripping a mouse.

The Mousetrapper Advance has more than the usual left and right mouse buttons. The traditional right and left buttons are there, along with an extra right click button and a dedicated double-click button. A center button lets you scroll up, down, and across any window. On any other mouse the dedicated double-click would be redundant, bordering on the ridiculous, but in this case it's a necessary design element. The moving trackpad can be clicked with some extra pressure, but the mechanism introduces some delay that double clicking would only exaggerate.

What is nice, however, is the padded surface of the wrist-rest. An ergonomic boon to typists, a wrist rest allows your joints to sit at a more natural angle, while relaxing, reducing tension and the strain that leads to carpal tunnel and similar maladies. The Mousetrapper Advance's wrist rest is made up of two polyurethane foam pads, covered with a rubber material that is easily wiped down for cleaning.

While there are many aspects to the Mousetrapper Advanced that are undeniably unique (some might say strange), they are generally dictated by the unusual design, and mesh well with it. he one detail that seemed poorly thought out, however, was the mini-USB connection used to plug in the USB cord. Recessed into the left hand side of the mouse/wrist-rest, the port isn't well placed for accepting the right-angle plug used on the end.

Features
Installation and set-up is pretty painless as well. First, plug the included USB cable into the Mousetrapper Advance. Next, plug the USB cable into an available port on your computer. That's it—you're done. The Plung'n'Play functionality lets you use it right out of the box with either Windows or Mac systems. If you want to reprogram any of the five mouse buttons, you can download an additional utility, but it's only available to Windows users.

Situating the Mousetrapper Advance on your desk may be a bit more work, as it has a built-in rubber mat which your keyboard sits on, providing some traction for your keyboard and keeping the two in position. The mat extends four inches from the end of the wrist rest, providing more than enough surface area to accommodate any irregularly shaped keyboards.

In regular use, the Mousetrapper Advance may not be everyone's cup of tea. Though the moving control surface is ergonomically kind to your hand and wrist, it also takes a lot of getting used to. Many of the intuitive controls that you'll find on a common mouse, like double clicking, the scroll-wheel, or gesture controls like two-fingered scrolling, are either absent or simply re-imagined in such a way as to make it a very different activity. I didn't particularly care for it, and found myself wishing for a different mouse most of the time that I used it.

In the wider arena of ergonomic mousing options, the Mousetrapper Advance is definitely one of the better solutions we've seen, but it's not for everyone. The high price and steep learning curve keep it from rating higher. But if repetitive stress injury or carpal tunnel is a serious concern for you, then the Mousetrapper Advance may be exactly what you need.

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the MouseTrapper Advance with several other computer mice side by side.

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