Honestly, would it kill online retailers to mention how many buttons a mouse has? Sure, most have two or three (or two and a scroll wheel that also acts as a third), but there are some that are in-between. There's this nice picture of this mouse, and it looks like it might have four or five buttons, but maybe it's just a little design carved into the side to make it look nice. Yeesh.

Yet, somehow, functions which aren't functions at all are listed. Signature red glow! Twenty foot cord for browsing pr0n, for those times when you don't want to get out of bed in the late afternoon! Ridged bottom for better grip on hard surfaces!

But the colours these things come in is incredible. I have seen no fewer than eight differently-coloured mouse and keyboard sets: red, orange, blue, yellow, violet, green, white, black, maybe some more in-between colours that aren't quite as memorable. Then there are the variations: earth green! Lightning yellow! Light red! Sky blue! Pepto-Bismol pink!

And now I find a mouse, that has not one, not two, not three, not four or five, but at least ten different buttons. With something they call "Cruise Control". Look, if I wanted my mouse to move at a constant speed, I'd take it for a ride east on Highway 64. That way my mouse would be constantly moving unnecessarily fast and I'd be going to visit my family. Two birds killed with the stone of justice.

Why do Microsoft's Intellimouse require 25 MB of hard disk space? Is this mouse making a hole in my computer, to have all its friends over for a cheese-and-clicking party? Why is this one particular mouse also bundled with a CD audio cable?

And what the hell is up with the cordless mice? As if that twenty-foot cord weren't enough, now you can move the mouse around the screen from another room altogether, perhaps even while you're taking a shower and you don't want the screen saver to set in or whatever. Furthermore, what the hell is 4D scrolling? Can I move my mouse pointer foward and backward in time, perhaps to see what I might click on in eight hours, or maybe what I clicked on six weeks ago?

Similar note - why, why, why would anyone want an internally-lit keyboard? For typing in the dark? Anyone who really knows how to type doesn't need light to do it. That's why we're called touch typists, not typists whose-keyboard-doubles-as-a-nightlight.

Screw it. I'm not shopping online for mice anymore. It's too frustrating. I'm buying my video card, my UPS, and I'm checking out.