Instantly Speed Up or Slow Down Your Mouse with Mouse Speed Switcher
Posted by: Barry Cleave in Freeware, tags: Freeware, Independant Review, Mouse, Programs, Software, Utilities, Vista, Windows, Windows XPWhat’s This About?
Mouse Speed Switcher is a little program that sits in your system tray (systray) which allows you to control the speed of your mouse between two user definable “speed of movement” settings. This can be done either by a mouse lick or a system wide Hotkey combination.
Why Would You Want It?
The speed of your mouse movement will often be a compromise between precision and time. If the mouse moves to quickly it is hard to precisely locate a particular point for precision work such as graphics. If the mouse moves to slowly it can be frustrating where you have to locate points across a screen or screens with a multi-monitor setup. Another problem can be where you use a touchpad or similar pointing device on a laptop but sometimes also use an external mouse (on its own or with a docking station for instance). Here it can be very useful to change the speed between the touchpad and the mouse for maximum productivity.
While windows provides a control panel function to change the mouse settings it is a long winded process. Mouse Speed Switcher provides a quick and easy interface to change the speed settings, apply one of them at startup and then quickly switch between the two with the mouse or keyboard.
Mouse Speed Switcher will also be very useful where you have children, in-experienced users or users who may benefit advanced accessibility options for mouse movement using the same computer/account as another user.
What Does It Do – The Essentials?
Summary:
- Provides two interchangeable mouse speed settings
- Allows for quick change between speeds.
Pros: What’s Good?
Features & Benefits
- Freeware
- Very Simple to Use
- Update check
Cons:What’s Not So Good?
- Nagware
- No help file
- Portable version not available for download*
*It will work as a portable application but only comes with an installer so you can extract the files or install and move them to a usb stick etc to make Mouse Speed Switcher portable.
More About What it Does in Detail:
Go to Page 2 for details and screenshots
Go to Page 3 for ProReviewer Summary
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September 25th, 2008 at 11:26 am - Edit
Some mouse drivers (Logitech for example) allow mouse “acceleration” which does the same thing automatically. When you move the mouse quickly, it moves the cursor even quicker. (Incidently, modern car brake systems work just like this.
September 28th, 2008 at 3:21 pm - Edit
This is a nice little program, I could see how it might be useful for developers the have to do fine designs.
Ron reviewss last blog post..PC game mouse review
September 30th, 2008 at 5:35 am - Edit
My home PC has 2 user accounts – 1 for my wife and one for my 6 yr old son. My son needs the mouse to move a little slower as he isn’t as precise with the movements. Changing the mouse speed under windows changes the speed for all users and my wife doesn’t like it. The same thing happens with screen resolution by the way. This program sounds like the perfect way to have 2 speed options available from a simple click. My family Thanks you!
September 30th, 2008 at 8:19 am - Edit
Hi Noblejoker,
Glad this may be of help, it certainly seems to be the utility you need.
Barry
October 9th, 2008 at 12:17 pm - Edit
I am not sure that you need a utility to do this, when Windows does a pretty effective job of managing the mouse speed from the control panel
October 11th, 2008 at 7:38 am - Edit
Hi Kay,
I think the reasons I see for using a utility such as this to change mouse speed instantly are pretty much covered in the post under “Why Would You Want It”.
For very occasional changes to the mouse speed and where you don’t need it quickly in the middle of doing something like editing a photo (where you may need precise movement) then the Windows Control Applet is fine.
Regards,
Barry
December 8th, 2008 at 5:19 am - Edit
Hi Barry,
I just downloaded your program. I have a computer hooked up to my big screen TV. My problem was that I have two input devices to control the mouse: a gyration remote control and a keyboard with a little built in joystick. They both control the mouse at different speeds, so the ideal speed setting for one input device is either extremely fast or extremely slow for the other. Since I’m constantly switching between the two, it’s not practical to keep going into the control panel to change the mouse speeds every time I set down the remote and pick up the keyboard (or vica versa). This program seems to be the perfect remedy. Well done!