Review: Waawoo Wow Pen Eco

Update:
March 11th 2007
My right hand is starting to hurt again (ulner nerve) where my pinky is going numb and my ring finger. I am thinking that because I was previously using the PistolMouseFPS, my hand somewhat healed and it tricked me into thinking the Wow pen was going to continue the pain-free legacy. I was wrong. So I'm going to publicly give this input device a 'Don't Buy' status....



I bought this device for $33.48 shipped using Google Checkout's $10 coupon. I've been using the ECO now for over 3 weeks full time use. One thing I would say is that I was definitely skeptical at first due to the seemingly lack of wrist rotation compared to a regular mouse:

Regular Mouse: Wow Pen Eco

What a difference! ;)

Well I don't know how but that slight difference is definitely better than a regular mouse as I can say from experience. I get pain from using a regular mouse and no pain so far with the Wow Pen Eco.

In about 10 minutes, I was already accustomed to using the the new mouse, including the scroll wheel and left and right clicking.

I will say though it loses points due to quickly gathering dust around the sensor, as I have already had to pull out some debris twice due to erratic mouse cursor movement. Whatever, it won't get permanently screwed up like a regular old school ball mouse. I will also say it loses points over the scroll wheel push in button. Its way to hard to push it in, and almost makes it useless. I never really bothered using that with a regular mouse though.


Similar Alternate Products:

Aero2bic Mouse (formerly Quill mouse):
http://www.officeorganix.com/Quillmouse1.htm

Evoluent VerticalMouse 3:
http://www.evoluent.com/vm3.html

MonsterGecko PistolMouse FPS:
http://www.monstergecko.com/products.html


I would rate the Waawoo Wow Pen ECO:
3 out of 10
I would not suggest picking one up to fix any form of pain from normal computing (Carpel Tunnel, RSI, or Ulner Nerve Problems).

Catching up Part I

I've done a lot within the last couple months. So I figured I'd catch up in the blog. This is part I:

I own a Dell Inspiron E1505 Laptop, of which I paid $697 including shipping on 07/15/06. It has 80GB, Duo Core 1.67, 1GB Ram, and unfortunately I only went for the ATI X1300 Mobility (which apparently has freezing problems) Dell disagrees with me:


I decided I wanted a little more power and wish I paid the extra $150 to upgrade the video card to the nVidia Geforce Go 7300 NJ887.

After trying to convince Dell over the phone to send me the upgraded 7300 due to my freezing problems with the ATI card, they transferred me all night long and finally they put me with some woman who suggested a video card on their website (7300 PCI-Express) for a DESKTOP. So I decided that I was going to get the ATI card as I was still under warranty and keep the new one. They overnighted it to me and basically I didn't bother putting it into my computer until I found a NJ887 256MB Geforce card on ebay (pull) for only $49.95.

TIP: If you are looking for something of a niche product, and want an email when new items are listed, check this out (official ebay favorite search link):

I have saved a lot of money with this tool. I have been watching for this particular (fingerworks touchstream lp) that has been going for up to $1800 and someone listed it for $590 Buy it Now. I got the email right away and now have the product. Very very useful. Notice how I saved approx $100 for this nvidia video card alone!

Obviously I couldn't help myself, it was a pull from another E1505 and even though the dell people told me it wasn't possible to install that card because I started with the ATI card, IT HAS WORKED.

I've since received that card from ebay, and taken out my old card, sent it to dell (RevA01) and kept the RevA02 they sent me. So basically by waiting I've saved a crap load of money.

Here are a couple pics of the process: