Gyration Mouse. Whoohoo! (HTPC Help)

I am building a HTPC this summer and have a couple questions. First off, has anyone tried one of these Gyration mice? They seem to be pretty much ideal for an HTPC set up and may even make it possible to game with a mouse on the couch. A little pricey, but if it works well I think it would be worth it.

Secondly, I am looking for a good looking and small HTPC case that supports standard ATX motherboards. I am currenly looking at this one, but I would love a recommendation.

Ideally you won't be using a mouse at all on an HTPC. I bought a Gyration keyboard and mouse combo off Woot a while back mainly for the keyboard. The mouse would take some getting used to and really is more for presentations than gaming. If I need to do anything requiring a mouse I end up just VNCing to my HTPC.

I never use the keyboard and mouse unless something is wrong or I'm updating software or something. And 95.5% of the time I do that from the couch with my laptop and VNC.

I've been through two gyration sets. They seem to self destruct after about a year, even with very light use. The batteries on the mouse can't stand sitting in the charger all the time it seems, so it only works for about 4 minutes at a time now. They keyboards seem to shed keys like some sort of skin disease.

I now just have a regular keyboard and the gyration mouse now, and if I need to do somethign quicker than I can fire up my laptop, I sit on the floor and do it (usually just rebooting or something)

I have a gyration mouse for PPT stuff but I don't think I'd game with it.

Once your TV application is running you'll primarily use the remote control, my buddy got a keyboard for when he needs one of them with a little 'nub' in the corner for a mouse and it has left/right mouse buttons on the opposite corner it works OK.

I've been using gyration stuff for about 3 years now. I'm still on the same "mouse" that I bought for my HTPC and it still works great, but I've replaced the mini keyboard with the full size one after it seemed to no longer send out a signal.

I've played WoW, various NFS games and some GTA:VC, and while it's neat for about 10 minutes the novelty wears off pretty quickly. That being said I use them for surfing and media functions quite a bit and they work great.

Thanks for the feedback, folks.

Ok, so mixed results on the gyration. I have a wireless keyboard that has a huge nub in the top right corner which will work fine for mousing on an HTPC, so I'll probably pass.

I still would love some recommend on cases. I am worried that I will have cooling problems with a big video card in such a small case. Any tips on cooling for these things?

Give up on small cases... Really. I use a full size HTPC case (silverstone and ahanix make good ones)... Lets you use 120mm fans running slowly and the largest copper heatsink you can find runnign slowly (likely a zalman). I use a 120mm fan over my passively cooled vidcard too. Its not small, but it's all clean and black and the loudest part by far is the hard drive... (working on that).

Going super small means heat issues or noise or water...