Hard on equipment. (three words, not two with one of them hyphenated).

[Wastelander]

I use a little laptop mouse :3

[crasher]

I'm trying the M65, first.

Then I wore out the joystick on my Saitek Cyborg Commander, and it won't steer the ATV left, or turn left anymore.
Bummer.

So I've got to get used to an M^% AND a Nostromo, both at once.
The Nostromo has fewer button than the Saitek, so I've got to figure out how to swap weapons with the mouse scroll wheel, but the game config wont recognize spinning the mouse wheel as a keystroke.

Any programming suggestions?

Thanks for any help.

Edit 1:
GEEEzus, I'm getting slaughtered.
This is pathetic....

[Galn]

I highly suggest looking into the Logitech G9x. I would buy this mouse 10x over anything else I've ever used. It doesn't have the million buttons on the side like some of the other things you can buy but it has lasted way longer than anything else I've purchased and hasn't faltered 1 bit. You can reprogram everything on the G9x to do anything including macro's. So there are 2 button's on the side, 2 DPI buttons, 3 wheel buttons( can push it left right and just plain click) plus you can program the scroll up or down to do whatever as well. So in total that's 11 button's, including the Left and Right click. More than enough for anything you plan to do and doesn't really take much to learn where those buttons are.

The other mice for gaming out there just are not as reliable in my opinion, and the steelseries doesn't have more buttons than what is on this 1, so why pay twice as much? You can adjust the DPI with custom profile's so once you find a comfortable level you can just set your profile for that and reprogram the DPI buttons. The wheel has a mechanical button on the bottom to make it free scrolling or the typical 1 downward motion per scroll.(that's a fuzzy explanation sorry, if it's on free scrolling you can just make it fly thru a scroll bar 100000 pages long in a few seconds)

Con:
1 Negative I have for this is switching your profile's. Either you have to set it up to automatically load your profile's based on what program is launched or you have to load your profiles to your mouse and switch thru them manually by holding the profile button and clicking the DPI buttons. Some of my program's don't get recognized so I have my profiles loaded on my mouse and manually switch to the 1's I need. If you only play game's though it will probably recognize all of them easily.

[Whippersnapper]

I just use a 3 button optical mouse. They're $3-$5 each.
I used to use trackballs.
I use a $1-$5 keyboard depending on what deals I can get. Yes sometimes they are $1. Disposable. If I get angry, they pay the price.

I'm fine, but I bet I could play better with more buttons. Can't beat $3-$5 though.