Microsoft is said to be currently working on an upgraded version of the company’s Arc mouse. The mouse is said to be a sort of answer to Apple’s Magic Mouse. While this is still a rumor, and to be taken with a grain of salt, the introduction to the market of such a mouse shouldn’t be a huge surprise. The Arc mouse has been around for some time and should be upgraded at one point. The rivalry between US computing companies is also not surprising anyone anymore.
There is of course one fact that further sustains this rumor. Microsoft registered the domain ‘arctouchmouse.com’ in the early spring of this year. The site currently redirects to Microsoft’s own search engine, Bing, which uncovers a whole series of articles about Microsoft allegedly preparing this mouse for release. As istartedsomething currently reports, several European retailers have also started to list a product called the Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse, even though the product doesn’t have an official page yet.
Microsoft Research has also held a project near the end of 2009 named ‘Mouse 2.0’ which presented several designs of the same product, the multi-touch mouse. One of them looked like a possible future upgrade of the company’s Arc Mouse. According to several of the retailers that displayed the future product, the price for this future mouse will be of under $70. This future mouse could be Microsoft’s attempt to make the multitouch functionality of Windows 7 available to desktop users as well. Tablet PC users are already taking advantage of these features, and maybe, with the help of this smart new mouse, desktop users will be able to as well. In the end I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what Microsoft’s future mouse will look like (if there will be one).
