I've had RSI/carpal tunnel syndrome for about ten years now, and last week, I finally found a solution that didn't involve surgery.
My freshman year I enjoyed my new-found freedom in a few different ways, but one way playing computer games whenever I felt like it. I played a lot of Quake online. Then Quake 2 and Quake 3. Half-life and Counterstrike held my attention for a few months. By the time I got into Everquest, my wrist had already accumalated probably close to five thousand hours of mousing time, and my main character in Everquest accumulated close to 120 days of play time before I finally quit. During that time, I didn't think much about my wrists, but my bad habits caught up with me shortly after graduation (in 2000), and my desktop gaming really declined because of persistent wrist pain in my mousing hand.
I didn't give up without a fight, mind you. I tried more ergonomic mice, switched to trackballs to minimized wrist movement, added various wrist braces, consulted with ergonomics professionals on the height of my desk and chair, and used various wrist rests. As a professional programmer, I've optimized all my programming (and other computer use) around extensive use of the keyboard. This ended up being a good thing simply because it sped everything up so much, but the wrist problems remained; even after just a few minutes of using a mouse (rather than a trackball), my wrist would start to flare up with pain that could last hours or even a whole day.
In addition to surgery, I had looked at another possible soluion: the Evoluent VerticalMouse 3. It feel neatly into the it-might-work-but-it-will-cost-$100-plus-shipping-to-find-out category. There are lots of products that didn't quite work, and there was no reason to believe the VerticalMouse would be the solution.
Last week, however, I got to talking to some of my friends about my ongoing problems, which they'd all heard me complain about for the past 5 or so years. We discussed making some kind of homegrown solution, and as we were engrossed in that discussion, one of my friends slid his phone over to me to show me an email reciept for the VerticalMouse he'd just purchased as we had been talking, as if to say "Screw it, if you're not going to give this thing a shot, I'll force you to by buying you one!".
Two days later, it arrived, and I swapped out my Logitech Cordless Optical Trackman (awesome trackball, by the way) for the VerticalMouse, and after more than 20 hours mousing with it this past week, in both games and on the desktop, I can safely say it has resolved 95% of my problems. It's actually a pretty nice device. It has native 1200dpi resolution, and the wireless version is very responsive, since it never shuts the optical sensor off. Despite always being on, it still has about a three month battery life when running on a fresh pair of AA alkalines.
I can't say exactly how the VerticalMouse works for others, but it has really helped me. I have no vested interest in pushing the VerticalMouse, but maybe someone who has had similar problems might find my experience to be an interesting data point in their searches for a solution.
