The mouse that healsAopen smokes out Logitech’s rodentBy Simon Burns in Taiwan: Friday 03 June 2005, 09:22ARE YOU GETTING enough ions? Apparently the negative sort is very important to our health. I have that on no less authority than a product manager for Aopen, a company whose contributions to modern medicine include CPU Overheat Protection Technology, and the world’s first slim pico-BTX tower.At Computex in Taipei, Aopen is demonstrating the world’s first ‘Ionic Mouse’. That’s a mouse which pours out healthy negative ions as you use it. That’s right. All you have to do is use your computer normally, and your health and productivity will improve.In an earlier press release, the company modestly claimed that the mouse “will repress the growth of germs, viruses; clean up the blood of human beings; revitalize the mouse user’s body cells; strengthen human body’s immune system; reduce disorders of human body’s respiratory system; ease anxiety and stress; and improve productivity.”In a slightly unfortunate choice of words, the same press release also describes the mouse as a “killer product”. But despite this, it’s clear that Aopen have high hopes for their pet rodent.According to Aopen, it generates 100,000 to 150,000 negative ions per cubic centimeter in a radius of one meter. That sounds like a lot of ions to me. On the other hand, ions are very small, so perhaps it isn’t really so many.Now, when the Ionic mouse (sometimes known as Anion Mouse) was first announced back in March, it generated little attention. But Aopen looks set to change that with an (apparently accidental) attempt at viral marketing. The company has produced an unintentionally hilarious video, in which it tortures two innocent mice. Aopen’s product manager promised to give the INQUIRER a copy of the video, but she appears to have reneged on that promise (perhaps wisely). A verbal description will have to do for now.The video shows two glass boxes, with a mouse in each. One is Aopen’s contender, the other is a ‘competing brand’ (I suspect that’s a euphemism for ‘Logitech’, king of the high-margin mousing market that Aopen would dearly like a slice of). Aopen’s chief product torturer then puffs thick smoke into each box, enveloping the mice. Ten minutes later, Ionic Mouse’s unique ionic action has absorbed all the smoke, leaving our hero sitting proudly in clean air (presumably packed with healthful ions). Meanwhile the ‘competing brand’ remains obscured, presumably suffocated by the toxic fumes.I think the point of this bizarre demonstration is: if you are a smoker, the Anion mouse will clean the air around your PC. And actually that sounds like a good idea. Aopen might be wise to lose all the hyperbolic health claims and sell this as ‘the smoker’s mouse’. Perhaps they could build an ashtray and a lighter into it.I’m not a smoker. All the same, Aopen’s representative was kind enough to give me an Anion Mouse to try out. I have to admit it’s a perfectly good cheap optical mouse. I have been using it now for a couple of days, and haven’t yet noticed any health benefits, or even “improvements in productivity”, but should there be any dramatic change, I will provide an update, or perhaps several.
