Is the laser mouse dead?

Red is the colour of fast sports cars, the rag that upsets the bull, and a sith lord’s lightsaber, but Microsoft is moving away from the fast, angry, dark side colour and into the realm of blue. First there was Bluetooth, then there was Blu-ray, and now from the giants that brought us the Windows operating system comes... the Blu-scroll. OK, so maybe it’s not called Blu-scroll officially but we like that title.

The hardware section of the Microsoft website has a ‘Say Goodbye to Laser’ teaser ad that leads internet detectives to the discovery of a new mouse listed on the Amazon.de website. The item has since been removed from the site, which indicates the validity of the discovery. The Blu-scroll mouse (see image) incorporates a blue LED tracker that should allow the mouse to be used on even more surfaces than the current mouse technology allows.

The official announcement for the upcoming Blu-scroll is speculatively set for the September 9th Microsoft event. So the question remains whether this new mouse is merely a revamped laser mouse, an optical mouse with improved tracking, or something entirely new.