After reading about it carefully, I almost decided I would do without the new Microsoft wheel mouse.  The idea is very appealing. There is a wheel between the two mouse buttons and you can use the wheel to scroll and do other fancy stuff.
   The catch is it works only with Office 97 applications. And while I use those applications quite a lot, I know from experience that if some feature is not available everywhere I simply won't use it anywhere.
   That is pretty much the same as playing basketball. If you have to stop and think not to put the ball on the floor, you've already lost your advantage. That's why much of basketball practice is simply "reps," or repititions; the coach wants the players to do things automatically.
   It is the same way with a mouse. If you have to stop and think to use this little wheel – which works just absolutely wonderfully, by the way – you might as well not have it. I must admit I was so intrigued by

scrolls through every program I have encountered. Works great. Like a charm. I'm impressed.
   Well, truth to tell, I would be happy with Flywheel if it just let me scroll through my screens. But, as someone once said, there's more . . .
   Press Control-Shift and rotate the wheel. You'll cycle through all the open documents in whatever application you're using. This beats the heck out of mousing up to the menu bar, clicking on "Window" and then clicking on the document you want to bring to the top. As someone who keeps several documents open at a time, but who hates to tile them on the screen, this feature is worth the price of Flywheel alone, which is only $10 anyway.
   Flywheel, as you can see from the illustration, integrates itself into the regular mouse property sheet. So, you can easily tinker with it to your heart's content along with a number of new options the wheel mouse offers when you buy it.
   If you've looked at the screen shot, you will see there is an "alternate scrolling mode" which can be invoked simply by pressing Control-Alt and moving the wheel. What's an "alternate scrolling mode," anyway?
   Well, when setting up Flywheel, you have a choice of having it scroll a line at a time or a page at a time. Whichever you don't set it for is the "alternate." I'm set up to scroll by line, but when I want to scroll pages at a time, I just press Control-Alt and away I go!
   This is an outstanding and elegant program. If you have a wheel mouse you owe it to yourself, as the Plannet Crafter people say, to put your mouse on steroids. And get in those reps!

   Link to Plannet Crafters web site.