Despite the fact that Apple is pushing towards the use of touch – via touchscreens and touchpads - for navigating a PC or other devices, Microsoft, promoting that virtues of the mouse, has recently introduces its Arc Touch Mouse.

Reporting Microsoft’s release of the Arc Mouse, Electronista has confirmed that the Arc Mouse features a clever, convertible design, and a touch-sensitive scroll wheel; and can be completely folded flat for travel.

The “touch” in the new Arc Mouse uses the center strip for carrying out actions like scrolling, mouse-clicks and page up/down. The mouse – which still makes use of two physical buttons for the primary left-and-right click functions - also boasts vibration feedbacks which compensate for a lack of detents that generally come with a physical scroll wheel. The software of the mouse also has provision for vibration-free scrolling as well as different scrolling speeds.

The Arc Touch Mouse finds its position with the help of the BlueTrack blue laser; and its output is beamed over RF wireless via a tiny USM receiver. The mouse, sans Bluetooth, can work for up to nearly six months, even with the use of AAA batteries.

Microsoft is likely to begin the shipping of the $70-priced Arc Mouse by early December, even though pre-orders for the mouse will soon commence at Beat Buy, Amazon, and Buy.com. The mouse is expected to hit outlets by January next year.