The PowerMate is lit from beneath by an electric blue LED which gets brighter or dimmer as the system volume is turned up or down. for altering the brush size in Photoshop. for scrolling up or down the page Safari, but sometimes you want a bit more control, e.g. The ability to alter the sensitivity is great, too, as sometimes you want it do much in a short rotation, e.g. It’s easy to turn the PowerMate but at the same time it feels, erm, weighty … that is while it’s easy to turn, it’s also easy to control and not too light. I repeated this for rotate left (Command + ‘-‘, i.e. Command and ‘=’ (which is the keyboard shortcut to zoom in). send a key-press, and finally which key-press to send, e.g. rotate right, and then what to do when I perform that action, e.g. Then I selected which action to configure, i.e. I wanted to set it up so I can zoom in or out in Photoshop: I clicked on “Add Setting…” and a file dialog appeared: from this I selected the application I wanted to use, i.e. The layout is simply and, after a quick play around, it’s easy to configure the PowerMate for use with any application. So, a venture into the preferences is called for: Turning whilst clicked also does nothing. clicking and holding for a specified time) ejects the CD/DVD drive.

when the front-most application hasn’t been configured to work with the PowerMate, turning it clockwise or anti-clockwise turns the system volume up or down clicking does nothing whilst long clicking (i.e. I found a suitable way of doing it after a bit of practise and now it’s almost second nature. pressing downwards on the top – this was purely a crip problem: it was my spazzy hand that was at fault, not the PowerMate. It has several actions: rotate right/clockwise or left/anti-clockwise click (press down) long click (press down and hold) and click and rotate right or left (press down and hold whilst turning).Īt first I had a bit of trouble clicking, i.e. Using a ruler (duh) I can tell you that the base is about 2¼ inches across while the top is about 1¾ … that’s 5½ and 4¼ centimetres for those of you watching in black and white.Īfter plugging the PowerMate into a spare USB port in my keyboard and installing the software (which forced me to reboot – shock horror!) I was ready to start twiddling my knob. It was also bigger than I expected – I’m not sure why, but I just imagined it to be smaller than it is. On opening the packaging the first thing I noticed was how weighty it felt – it’s not exceptionally heavy, but it does feel it when compared to, say, my Mighty Mouse. I read about the PowerMate back when I ordered my iMac some 17 months ago – I’d considered buying one at that time but, for a reason I can’t remember, never did. When N told me that she couldn’t think of a suitable present for my birthday, she suggested I buy something myself and she’d give me the money to pay for it, so I ordered a Griffin PowerMate.

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