Cirque Cruise Cat Review

Author : Wayne Date : 7th June 2001

3DVelocity would like to thank Cirque and especially Ian Taggart for their help and courtesy in providing this touchpad for review.

Introduction :
Some of you will not have heard of Cirque, but I'm guessing the most of you will have heard of GlidePoint, Cirque's proprietary touchpad technology. More often associated with notebook PC's, Cirques actually offer a few products that bring the benefits of touchpad technology to the desktop.

To set the scene for this , let me start by proclaiming that when I started this review I hated touchpads. Now if it seems a little odd that a guy who hates touchpads should be reviewing one, let me say that in my book it makes me the ideal person for the job. I should also point out that after spending a few days with this product, my views on touchpads have mellowed considerably.

We have come to expect the humble mouse to be able to handle every aspect of what we do at the computer when in reality there are usually more efficient ways to get certain tasks done. Surfing the 'net is one instance where the mouse just doesn't have the flexibility or the programmability to be an efficient tool, and the 'net junky is just the kind of person Cirque had in mind when they created the Cruise Cat.

In addition to greatly reducing the risk of RSI or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, the Cat is theoretically closer to our native "pen and paper" way of life.

If you're assuming the Cruise Cat is a simple touchpad slapped into an enclosure so it can be used on the desktop then you're shooting well wide of the mark. There's a host of features built into this baby that make for a more enjoyable, less stressful Internet experience. Before we get to these though, let's take a look at who Cirque are.

The Company :
Founded in 1991, Cirque Corporation was the original inventor of GlidePoint touchpad technology. Since the release of our capacitive touchpads in 1994, Cirque has continued to be the market leader with its unique products.

Cirque's proprietary touchpad technology is known by the trademarked names "GlidePoint" or "GlidePoint® Control" and is based on "mutual capacitance sensing" or "electrode-to-electrode sensing" technology. The touchpad contains a two-layer grid of electrodes connected to an ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit). As a human finger (or other conductive material) passes over the grid, the capacitance between the electrodes changes, causing the computer to follow the motion of the finger.

System Requirements :
IBM PC-compatible desktop, laptop, notebook or subnotebook computer
Available Serial or PS/2 port
One of these operating systems:
Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows NT 4.0 Windows 2000

Specifications :
5 in. long x 5 in. wide x 0.5 in. deep
6-ft. serial cable (6 in. PS/2 adapter included)
Two mechanical buttons; infinite programmable functions
No contact pressure required; sensitivity adjustable with driver.

 

 

Getting Started:
I'm going to kick off by giving the box a mention. Although this has absolutely nothing to do with how Cruise Cat works, it is the first point of contact for the potential buyer, and in all honesty the box is tastefully done with all relevant specs and features clearly visible. A small point maybe but one worth a quick mention.

Fishing the Cat out of its box, the first thing that grabs your attention is how thin and relatively light it is. At this point I was a little concerned that it was likely to slide around in use, but as it turned out this was a stuffed Cat and didn't move an inch during even the heaviest 'net bashing sessions.

In the box you'll also find a serial to PS/2 adapter, a driver installation CD and of course the usual setup guide and documentation. This Cat had a particularly long tail with a healthy six feet of cable sprouting from its upper edge allowing more flexibility in choosing its eventual resting place.

With the Cat sat on my desk and the cable fed through, It was simply a case of bolting on the serial to PS/2 adapter and and installing the software. One small gripe is that I'd sooner the Cat came with a standard PS/2 plug and that the adapter was PS/2 to serial rather than the other way around. I also think it time that Cirque considered the switch to USB.

Driver installation was a breeze, the CD autoran and installed the drivers without any fuss. Drivers are available for 95/98/NT/2000. Once installed the you are prompted to reboot, and it was here I hit my first problem. After rebooting I had lost sound, and a quick poke around device manager confirmed that my SoundBlaster Live was missing in action. The only way I was able to coax it back to life was by booting with the card removed and the a second time with it back in again, at which point it auto detected and sprung back to life.
There is actually a section on the support page of their site labelled "Installation causes a conflict with Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live" which states "The Sound Blaster Live and the Cirque drivers, version 1.05, both conflict using a standard Windows API call. To correct this problem, Cirque has released an updated driver, version n1.06 which eliminates the use of this API, thus eliminating the conflict. Creative Labs has also released an update to their software which corrects this issue. " Unfortunately I wasn't using version 1.05 though.

I decided to use the Cat with my Intellimouse Explorer also connected to a USB port, and while both functioned perfectly, the scroll function transfers to the Cat and can't be accessed using the mouse wheel.

 

In Use :
With all these minor niggles behind me, it was time to actually see how well (or badly) the Cat performed.

Placing a finger on the pad surface was my first surprise, though a pleasant one this time. A lot of progress seems to have taken place over the year or so since I last did any real work on a touchpad. This new surface was slightly textured and allowed my finger to glide smoothly and easily unlike the last pad I used which tended to grab and judder. Even when my finger was a little sticky from the rarity of a hot British day the pad surface remained slick and easy to move around. The cursor was beautifully accurate and at no point during testing did it ever jump of fail to respond.

Accurate placement of the cursor can take time to master, and to help there's an optional fast or slow mode. Switching to slow mode makes it far easier to make small, accurate movements such as when you need to insert a letter in the middle of a word. To begin with it may be worth mapping this feature to one of the mechanical or virtual buttons.

Before you actually get started, the installed software runs you through a nifty little training session where you get accustom the way the Cat handles clicks, double clicks, right clicks and dragging. Sensitivity is incredible needing the very lightest of touches, though until you get used to it, this means that the simple task of lifting your finger and placing it down again can be interpreted as a single click.
The important thing is that you don't just try the Cat for an hour and decide you don't like it. As with anything that varies from the traditional mouse recipe (even a Razer Boomslang) you need to allow yourself a reasonable time to get familiar with it. Until you are, you will certainly be a lot slower than you are with your mouse and may end up wondering just how it's supposed to be more efficient.

Arranged around the four sides of the pad itself are some of the more useful features. At the bottom and right hand edges you will find a horizontal and vertical scroll function. Simply by running your finger along these edges you are able to scroll around a page as you would with a mouse scroll wheel, though even now few mice have an extra wheel for horizontal scrolling. Scrolling function can be changed from the original to the new scroll97 flavour from within the drivers.
Down the left hand side of the pad is the Zoom function which allows you to zoom 97 style pages in or out. Finally, the top edge allows you to flick backwards and forwards through pages you have viewed in the same way as hitting the back/fwd buttons in your browser.

The blue area at the top right is your right click zone. Tapping here simulates a right mouse click and brings up the context menu. This area is active for normal cursor positioning in regular use and only functions as a right click zone when actually tapped.

Below the pad area are two mechanical buttons built into the enclosure that are set by default to left and right click functions. These buttons and the blue "right click" zone can all be reprogrammed to other functions from within the drivers. I must admit the thing I had most problem with was right clicking. It's a feature I use a hell of a lot, and found it tricky to locate the right hand mechanical button or the upper right blue zone without taking my eyes off the screen. Switching the right click function to the left hand mechanical button solved this for me, but the important thing is that the setup can be customised and you're almost certain to find a layout that suits your particular needs.

Finally, down the very left hand side of the enclosure are four "virtual hot buttons". Again these are fully programmable with the exception of the top "gestures" button which I'm guessing you'd want to keep anyway. We'll cover gestures on the next page.

By default, these are used to launch your web browser, your email prog and the Cruise CD and mixer utilities installed with the drivers. A raised strip stops your finger accidentally wandering onto the buttons by mistake.

 

Page 2 >>>