By Tech Powered Dad | August 9, 2010
UPDATE (7/27/11): After hearing nothing for a year, Canon has announced they will release the Cannon X Mark 1 Calculator Mouse in August 2011. Buy the X Mark on Canon.com.
The gadget world was all a twitter over the weekend as Canon announced the creation of the X Mark I, a combination mouse-calculator-numeric keypad. This bluetooth mouse features large, PC sized buttons.
With all the gadget gurus falling all over themselves to report the excitement of this new device (Engadget called it “magical”), apparently no one is asking, “Haven’t we been here before?”
In 2007, Lexibook announced the CU50 mouse calculator with extremely similar functionality to much acclaim. Despite being announced three years ago, we can’t seem to find any mention of the CU50 in Ebay, Amazon, or any other retailer, so it’s probably safe to say the biggest splash it made was it’s original press release.
Admittedly, the X Mark I is a more attractive device, and being wireless is always nice, but we’ll take a wait and see approach. It’s hard to know without taking one for a test drive, but it’s easy to envision the numerical buttons being an annoyance during normal mouse usage. Canon is scheduled to release it this November for about $60. Will you have it on your Christmas wish list?