The Apple Magic Mouse is getting a lot of press -- bad press, mostly. Still, the attempt is to make all functionality invisible. Instead of buttons, the Magic Mouse has multi-touch gestures.

The opposite of the Magic Mouse is an over-engineered pointing device called the OpenOfficeMouse. The mouse has 18 buttons! It also has an Xbox-like joystick on the side. Those buttons are highly programmable with key commands, macros and what the write-up calls "default profiles" for OpenOffice applications.

Somebody tell me: What's the point of so many buttons, and so much programmability? Convenience? It will take you two years to master all the time-saving features.

I never thought I'd see the day, but here it is: Some gadgets, phones and computers have now become too small, too cheap, and too feature-rich.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com, follow him on Twitter or his blog, The Raw Feed.