Slowmousion: slow down the mouse via hotkey for a higher degree of control

Slowmousion is a small free memory resident app that slows down mouse movements whenever the user presses keyboard hotkey. It is useful whenever the user needs heightened control over mouse movements such as when using the mouse for drawing or illustrating purposes.

If you’ve ever attempted to draw or illustrate with the mouse then you know how much of a difficult task that could be. If you have to do it, however, you might want to consider using this program; it will not elevate your mouse into a drawing tool on par with as a graphics pen/tablet but it can provide a higher level of control over your mouse movements when you need it.

Here are more notes on this program:

• How it works: pressing a keyboard hotkey while the program is running will slow the mouse down significantly.
• Hotkeys: the user is able to select from a handful of hotkeys, including the windows key, apps key, F4, F8, or any of the three mouse buttons.
• Memory consumption: 5 megs in memory. More than I would have expected, but it hardly matters since you do not need this program running at all times and can simply launch it when you need it.

Wish list:

• Having the ability to control the extent to which the mouse is slowed down, as I’ve found myself wishing it was a tad faster at times.

The verdict: this program is from the same guy who wrote Phlox,which I reviewed previously. I didn’t think much of it when I first saw it but since then I installed a freeware animation application that I am testing for a possible review, and have had to create illustrations with the mouse. This is when I remembered and installed Slowmousion in the hope that it can help me create better drawings. In practice I have found that it can help marginally at times, depending on the mouse-task you are performing.

Version Tested: 1.1

Compatibility: Windows 2000, XP, Vista.

Go to the Slowmousion page to download the latest version (approx 461K).