Back in 2010 I’d bought myself a Roccat Kova (the Roccat Kova+ is a newer model), and I spent a great deal of time looking for an ambidextrous mouse to finally come to that conclusion. The major reason is family, because being a primarily lefty guy I know all too well what using an uncomfortable mouse meant for righties felt like… horrible – and I didn’t want family members feeling that discomfort. Finally I’m not so lefty as ambidextrous, I just use my left hand for gaming because that is what I got used to. So today I decided upon an experiment… I’m swapping hands.

This isn’t an easy choice, I have basic usage of my right hand for mousing – I developed that in school and college for convenience. But the left hand has been honed since our first family computer, you see we’d played the likes of Tomb Raider, a game which didn’t need a mouse using the arrow keys, spacebar and whatnot; so the mouse was used as a basic tool to get where we needed to go. My Father is a left-handed guy, as is my Mother… its always been a oddity to them and us that myself and my sister are right-handed.

Its an oddity to me that I can use my left hand so well, so going about swapping isn’t difficult, what is hard is the confusion the hands get, muscle memory and fine control. Suddenly the left hand is demoted to keyboard duty and the right is going to have to do more than bash keys. Theoretically at least one of these shouldn’t be a problem as the right hand is used to the fine (but rare) motor control required for writing.

Either way, I’m easy…

All of this brings up another question – what if, after a month or two of mouse use do I find that my right hand is terrible for mousing? Could that theoretically mean my left would be better at writing if I’d been persistent with it? There is only one way to find out, and that means swapping my mouses hardware settings around, moving the mousepad across and giving it a go for a good amount of time; I think 2 months should probably see me getting some results – and I’ll be keeping track on here for a while.

Or am I an ambidextrous wizard capable of dazzling people by writing two sets of confused notes at once?! Time to find out I feel.

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For any future postings in this series, check out the left-to-right tag. I’ll probably keep a daily record to begin with, I need to throw some gaming in to develop fine control; and of course the daily use. If you enjoy what I write (I’m steering away from ranty, it’ll just be dreamy and shiny, I swear) – don’t forget to subscribe or bookmark!