Help me rotate my mouse 90 degrees!

December 1, 2007 9:18 AM

How can I rotate my mouse axes by 90 degrees in Windows 2000?

I am in the process of setting up a small laptop (Thinkpad 240) as a dedicated ebook/comic reader, to be held sideways, like a book. I've already got the screen rotation figured out (using Samsung MagicRotation), but the pointer axes are also rotated when the screen is. All that I have left to figure out is either:

How to rotate the screen without rotating the mouse as well, or
How to rotate the mouse axes independent of the screen position.

I feel like I'm missing something obvious, as I haven't found any workable solutions so far. I saw a mention that an older version of Logitech Mouseware might have had this ability but I have been unable to verify this so far. Any low cost or free ideas you may have would be appreciated!

posted by Drew_Blood to computers & internet (7 comments total)

MAF-Mouse is the best I've found so far.

There should be a registry setting for this, but I can't find it...
posted by kureshii at 10:53 AM on December 1, 2007

I had a somewhat similar set-up at one point and got a trackball. You can turn the trackball in any direction -- a very underrated pointing device.
posted by GPF at 1:24 PM on December 1, 2007

True, but I'm shooting to keep this thing small and self contained so I'd like to avoid extraneous devices.

I've contacted the writer of the mafmouse driver to see if it can switch axes or just invert directions. If so, I will probably go that way, since his prices are pretty reasonable for end users.

If not, I'm considering actually physically reorienting the pointer (it's joystick/nub style).
posted by Drew_Blood at 1:39 PM on December 1, 2007

I could have sworn there was a setting in Windows where you could move the move "up" and it would re-calibrate the mouse direction. But I can't find it now. Am I imagining things?
posted by jpdoane at 4:25 PM on December 1, 2007

I sure hope you're right but I haven't seen anything like that. Let me know if you remember where you saw it!
posted by Drew_Blood at 5:55 PM on December 1, 2007

I believe that the "recalibrate mouse up" option was in the MS Intellimouse settings (sorry, don't have it installed right now to check).
posted by mysterious1der at 6:27 PM on December 1, 2007

I can't believe this, but I found a working solution that's intended to be a joke. It seems completely perfect so far though. Anyone looking for a similar solution, check out Sakasa Mouse. It's supposed to be a prank app, but you can actually configure it to rotate 90 degrees without a hitch.

Thanks for all your suggestions!
posted by Drew_Blood at 9:09 PM on December 1, 2007