World of Warcraft Parents Guide

World of Warcraft is hard on your child’s mouse, keyboard and fingers. The game is intense and it’s easy for your son to get carried away as he pounds the keys and clicks the mouse while fighting bosses like Archavon the Stone Watcher.

It’s important for your child to observe good computer habits to avoid Repetitive Strain Injury. But let’s be realistic: Kids are even less likely than adults to take breaks, look away from the screen, and adjust the mouse and keyboard to a correct ergonomic distance. After all it’s victory if you can get your game-player to brush his teeth or eat carrots.

A good solution is to provide your child with specialized computer peripherals that take some of the stress out of clicking and pounding. I’m not talking about gaming keyboards and mice. These pricy peripherals usually look cool but are poorly designed, made of flimsy materials, and are complicated to setup. Unfortunately, no matter how cool a gaming mouse looks or how many programmable function keys a gaming keyboard sports none of them seem to be designed with ergonomics in mind.

Contour Design, located in Windham, New Hampshire, makes computer peripherals that actually minimize RSI and, as a by-product, maximize WoW performance. The Contour Mouse may not look cool but it’s innovative design ensures it is easy to grasp and makes clicking, scrolling, and pointing for long periods pain free. It even comes in a left-handed flavor!

We bought the Contour Mouse after a long search for a mouse with three real buttons. Most mice have only two buttons with a scroll wheel in the middle that also functions as the 3rd button. It’s hard to get a nice clean click on a scroll wheel and after an hour or two of PvP or raiding it becomes a real pain. The Contour Mouse is a 5-button mouse with the scroll wheel on the side. It provides plenty of extra buttons for key binding game functions without sacrificing joint and tendon health.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Hints & Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.