Evoluent VM4R Vertical Mouse 4 Right Hand Ergonomic Mouse Wired USB – Relieves Wrist Discomfort, Adjustable Speed, Programmable Buttons – Vertical Ergonomic Wired Mouse for Carpal Tunnel, Office Use

I started using this mouse not because of carpal tunnel syndrome, but chronic tennis elbow. My doctor first suggested a wrist brace to try to limit the effects of work (programming) on elbow pain, but that got old in a hurry, so I decided to try a vertical mouse and adjustable keyboard.Positives:It feels quite natural, and takes little time to get used to. The hand position is rotated some 60-70 degrees from horizontal, and this should help with RSI concerns.There is a middle mouse button! I haven't had one of those for ages, but it's great, especially in Linux where "button 3" is the preferred way to do a quick text paste between windows. For most mice, the scroll wheel doubles as the middle button, but it can be difficult to press a wheel without turning it at the same time. This is much easier for me.Sensitivity is adjustable on the mouse itself, in four steps (high, medium, low, extra low). I find that either of the middle settings works okay for me; high is out of control, and extra low makes it hard to get across the screen. So the range of adjustment seems pretty reasonable. I can conceive of situations where I might want to change sensitivity temporarily - say, when doing fine detailed graphics work. This mouse will let you do the adjustment without messing around in the operating system's control panel.Negatives:The mouse body is lightweight plastic, and on a smooth surface the thing moves too easily. Why do I care? Isn't easy movement a good thing? Well, not necessarily. It matters in this case because the buttons are actuated horizontally. I cannot click a button without jiggling the pointer. A mouse pad of the right texture might help here, but what the manufacturer really needs to do is put some inert mass into the mouse body. Or, they should provide a compartment to let the end user add weight "to taste" without having to take the mouse apart and void the warranty. The wireless version of this mouse probably avoids the problem by virtue of containing batteries; keep that in mind when making your choice between them.**LATE EDIT REGARDING MOUSE WEIGHT** More than a year later, with the product well out of warranty, I finally looked into this issue. The bottom plate of the mouse can be detached via 4 screws: two are under the middle product label (feel around for subtle indentations, and stick a small phillips screwdriver through the paper) and the other two are under the front-edge slider pad, which is easily peeled away to expose them. Once the bottom is removed, you can see how much central space you have to work with. My solution was to take a handful of metal hardware (mostly computer case screws, but anything will do if the pieces aren't too big), put them in a plastic bag to prevent disturbing any electrical connections, tucking them into the mouse body, and then reattaching the base. It makes a night and day difference. The added mass makes all movements more positive, less squirrelly. I'm not using a pad, but putting it directly on a hard desktop surface. Because this works so well and is such a simple modification, I'm increasing my review rating to 5 stars. This is now an *excellent* mouse!A tip just for Linux users:Firefox, at least, expects any extra "back/forward" navigation buttons to be reported as numbers 8 and 9. On this mouse they are unconventionally numbered 8 and 10, 9 being reserved for the mouse wheel (scroll-up=4, scroll-down=5, wheel-press=9). Depending on what desktop environment you run, you might have a graphical control for button assignment, but the following command, as part of my X session startup script, fixes it for me by swapping 9 with 10:xinput set-button-map "Kingsis Peripherals Evoluent VerticalMouse 4" 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 9 11 12 13 14

After moving to a new role that required more hours at the computer(ranging from 4-6 hours/day) than I would really prefer, I was eventually starting to feel some wrist fatigue and I was looking for something new to try. As an Industrial Engineer by trade and degree I have a background in ergonomics and had never been all that impressed by other "ergo" mice/input devices. The 3M joystick style never felt right and was difficult to get used to and I had never really liked the trackball style so when I came across this I decided to give it a shot, it was different enough from the competition and well reviewed so I decided to give it a go.Packaging was well done and installation/setup was easy, it works without installing the drivers but you don't get much of the functionality of it until the drivers are installed. Once that was complete it was pretty intuitive to get the settings adjusted, if you spend enough time at the computer to be looking for a product like this and you found this review, you won't have any problem getting the mouse installed and setup.Use-Although you may think this would be hard to get used to, the natural position of the hand/wrist is known as the "handshake" position and using this mouse is extremely easy and very natural, other people who use it have no problems at all adapting immediately. The biggest catch is that you really need to use a wrist support or a mousepad with one built into it due to the new position your wrist will be in, other then that it's basically plug and play! The number of user/application specific shortcuts that you can program into it is impressive and once you get used to them are incredibly handy. Sensitivity is quickly adjustable on the fly, the buttons and scroll wheel have a good tactile feel and aren't overly noisy.Overall-I'm extremely happy with this mouse and wish I would've bought it 5 years ago when I got out of college. 2 biggest items to be aware with it....A.) Buy a mousepad with wrist support(or a standalone wrist support), and B.) Prepare to answer lots of questions from coworkers as everyone who comes in the office and sees this LED blue light emitting tombstone sitting where a mouse goes has questions about what/why/how come/how much etc. I haven't convinced any of my fellow coworkers who also spend too much time dealing with CAD issues and responding to email to get one yet, but its getting close and everyone who sits down and tries it for a couple minutes comes away with a much better opinion of it. It's been on my desk for roughly 4 months now and I will never go back to a "normal" mouse on a full time basis again.

Just bought another to replace my original. After 17 years, the first finally stopped working.Huge fan of vertical mouse because it is so natural and comfortable. I’ve use one of these all day every work day for most of my career and can’t recommend it enough.This make is the original and their product os highly dependable. You can expect a very long service life this it’s a good value in the long run.