USB Overdrive is THE "Killer App" for USB multi button input devices, such as mice or joysticks for Macintosh computers with USB ports. Most Macintoshes manufactured in the last 5 years or so have USB ports replacing the Apple Desktop Bus ports. If your older Power Macintosh has one or more PCI slots, you can buy an inexpensive card that will give your Mac USB ports. Spend a little more and you can have both USB and FireWire ports. However, that is beyond the scope of this review.
(I'm using a Power Macintosh 5400/200, running OS 8.6. I've a two port USB PCI card installed in the Mac and I'm using an optical two button/scrollwheel mouse made by Elecom, a Japanese peripheral company.)
If all USB Overdrive did was implement multiple buttons and the scrollwheel on a mouse, it would be just fine. But it does even more, and this is where it blows away every other driver.
You can customize USB Overdrive for individual applications.
For example, Eudora and virtually all browsers can use the SPACE bar to scroll down a screen at a time. I've programmed USB Overdrive to use the right button on my mouse to send a SPACE.
Another application I use, Mail Beacon, uses a COMMAND-CLICK to mark individual emails on a server. I've programmed USB Overdrive to send that key combination from the right button on my mouse.
Yet another application that has been enhanced via USB Overdrive is SoundJam MP, the MP3 player that Apple's iTunes is based upon. I've programmed the mouse to use the scrollwheel as a volume control.
Essentially every button on the mouse, as well as the various scrollwheel options (wheel up/down clicked wheel up/down) can be programmed with any conceivable keystroke sequence, even open a URL, all from the very user friendly Control Panel. The mouse speed and other aspects can be equally tweaked from the USB Overdrive Control Panel
Also, for some applications, USB Overdrive implements features not found in the application, such as the scrollwheel.
Anyone who uses a USB input device such as a mouse, or joystick should give USB Overdrive a tryout. Anyone who wants to replace the single button Mac mouse with a multibutton USB optical mouse or joystick or trackball needs USB Overdrive.
The free trial period for USB Overdrive is 30 days, then you get a nag screen. The shareware fee is a reasonable US$20.00. OS8/OS9 and OSX version are available.
Mail Beacon is a small application that allows you to view, read, respond or delete mail on the server at your ISP. "OK, and why would I want to do that?" I hear you ask.
Well, among other things, you can delete obvious spam, ON the server. This means you don't have to download all your mail first and then filter & delete it. And in recent months, what with the deluge of the SWEN worm, having to download upwards of 100 worms a day, each one about 150 kilobytes in size, over a 56k dialup connection, before I could delete them from my hard drive was quite a waste of time.
Now, via Mail Beacon, I spend, at most, a minute, pointing and clicking on the list of mail that's on the server at my ISP, deleting the worms and other obvious spams, and then downloading my mail via Eudora. This saves me a lot of time ever day.
Mail Beacon is shareware. Your trial period is 30 uses. Uses being defined as running the program and then quitting it. If you leave your Mac on all the time, this application can be left running in the background. Be a good sport and pay the modest US$15.00 shareware fee.
USB Overdrive can be found HERE.
Mail Beacon can be found HERE.