Transforming Flat-Pack Mouse Lives in Your Laptop CD Drive

The CD-ROM drive was king for quite a while, but it seems like more and more they just kind of hang around in our laptops, taking up space. This brilliant design from Taewon Hwang makes use of the CD drive once again by storing a flat-pack mouse in it. The mouse is full size and comes with an integrated USB dongle, all in a CD-sized package.

The design, an entry in the 2012 iF Design Talents competition, is only a concept – but it’s an incredibly impressive one. The mouse starts out flat but pops out, origami-style, into a full-size optical mouse. When you’re done using it, it unfolds right back into its CD shape and you stash it in the CD drive again.

This mouse, if it ever makes it to store shelves, would fix once and for all the dilemma that laptop users have been facing for years: is it better to use that stupid integrated trackpad or carry along a mouse in the laptop bag? The Flat CD Mouse would make that question obsolete – at least for people whose laptops still have CD drives.

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See more in Computers or under Gadgets. September, 2012.