I direct your attention to this article by Lance Ulanoff. It’s about things that annoy him about personal computing. For the most part I agree with what he says. However, there is one thing about which we disagree. This is what Lance has to say about mice:

Our mice are ten times better than they were in the 1980s and 1990s. No mouse balls and rollers to gunk up, just elegant optical laser systems. But while the internal mechanics have taken huge leaps forward, the button proliferation is a big step back. I still use just the two main buttons and sometimes the roller—nothing else. I do not need side buttons near my thumb. My last digit is happy just to grip and move the mouse. I hate when I accidentally hit a side button that takes me back to my previous Web page, and it always happens at the worst time—just as I nearly finish completing a lengthy Web form.

I couldn’t disagree more. I use a Logitech MX700 and it’s far and away the best mouse I’ve ever used. It has a total of eight buttons (including the scroll wheel) and I use seven of them every day. Aside from the left and right click buttons I have one button set up to take me to the next unread article in my RSS aggregator, one set up to open a new tab in Safari, the Back and Forward buttons and the scroll wheel button which opens Dashboard. I recently had to use a computer which had only two buttons (not even a scroll wheel) and I felt like I’d lost a limb. Dragging the cursor up to the top of the browser window every time I wanted to go back was almost as debilitating as not having tabs (the computer in question was also cursed with IE).

I also can’t understand Lance’s frustration with hitting the buttons accidentally. Even if you don’t find the Back/Forward side buttons useful it’s extremely straightforward to simply disable them.