Do you use the PC much? Do you care about your health?

For the yes-sayers, pay attention, your continued PC usage and your day-to-day life is likely at risk.

Assuming you're a human being, there are tasks you do repeatedly - assuming you're lazy, or perhaps a person less bound by the challenge of being active, you're likely to be doing these repetitive tasks in a similar if not identical matter.

Introducing Repetitive Strain Injuries (or RSI), difficult to heal, incrementally building up pains and the PC enthusiasts' hell on earth.

RSI develops mostly because humans were not really meant to, evolutionary, be sitting on their asses for 10 hours a day, moving only their eyes, fingertips and maybe, just maybe, scratch themselves every now and then - thus the results of unnatural action can very much be, undesirable.

I started developing RSIs myself, after 19 years of being on a PC, with at least 5 hours a day usage - things start happening to you. And it doesn't matter if you're a gamer, programmer or any casual user, sooner or later, if you do not take precaution, you're going to be affected.

Welcome to the world of Evoluent Vertical Mouse 3, an integral part of our solution.

As you can imagine from the product name, the Vertical mouse has you holding it vertically rather than horizontally, the logic behind that is biological:

When your arm is placed horizontally on the mouse, two bones in the arms twist on one another, and given the long sessions of repetitive mouse moving and clicking, the nerves found in between them start to grow ever more sensitive to the pressure applied to them.

The sensitivity is materialized in growing pains, increased feeling of 'swollen palms' and many other nasty aches that build up to the point you can't type or move the mouse.

The Evoluent Vertical Mouse tackles this historical mishap by proposing a historical compromise: Keep using the mouse as you always did, only in a more healthy manner, with a minimal learning curve.

The new position dictates that you stress your nerves less, and thus decrease the potential incremental health deterioration, and I say decrease because as we've mentioned earlier, no repetitive task goes unpunished!

So, you're thinking, what is this good for if I'm going to go down that painful road anyways? The answer is diversity! Diversify the way you use your PC and you'll decrease the risks even more.

I've been using the Evoluent Vertical Mouse (2 and now 3) at my 9-hours a day software engineering job for the past 10 months, I wouldn't want to go on without it.

Its quite easy to grab and get used to, even for the veterans amongst us, the learning stage is quite easy and the dynamics remain the same, and the buttons are still operated by the same fingers, and positioning is intuitive for the most novice users out there. Simply imagine yourself grabbing any basic mouse and rotating your arm 90 degrees, that’s exactly how your arm will be positioned, and the Evoluent mouse is designed to support your palm, no worries about discomfort.

Games wise, the mouse is perfect for gaming, especially for those lengthy The Sims 2 sessions. Shooters wise, I tackled Battlefield 2 and Unreal Tournament 2004 quite gracefully, and while it takes a bit of re-orientation to retain your skill levels, you will by all means, remain competitive from minute one.

Resolution wise, the image sensor goes up to 2600DPI, not too shabby for a mouse, and can be toggled by a small button near the image sensor, 1800DPI/1200DPI and 800DPI are your options – note that to change the resolution you have to lift the mouse and press the button, I mention for whoever seems to require furiously continuous resolution changes on their mouse (Note: If you’re one of them, please, email us, we have some questions for you, starting with, Why?)

When it comes to software, Evoluent suggests you grab X-Mouse, a free piece of software to enable various programming abilities for your mouse – I use it to program the extra buttons for double clicking and middle mouse as it is less of an effort to push the wheel button – for RSI weary folks, this is tremendously helpful and double-clicking is a repetitive, unnecessary and frowned upon task.

In conclusion, this mouse needs to be bundled with every PC out there for the sake of our health, get one, diversify your workflow and prolong your days as a PC user - after 10 months of daily use, I can safely say, this is an Class-A product. Do yourself a favor, invest a bit more in your set up and add this mouse to your Things-I-Use-Daily list, you will thank us for it.