Update: As of 28^th July 2012, Touch Mouse Mate's developer has announced that the project will no longer be maintained. It will continue to work in Windows 7 and 8, but won't get any updates in the future.

The Microsoft Touch Mouse is crafted specially for Windows 7. It is equipped with features that make navigation on Windows 7 super-fast, but it lacks the middle-click function - a feature so basic that almost every mouse on the market has it. This can be very annoying to those who use the middle-click button very often. There are many applications which can be nearly unusable if your mouse lacked the middle-click function.

Currently, there are many workarounds. Many applications and AutoHotKey scripts claim to enable middle-click on the Touch Mouse, but people may take time to get used to most of them. Out of these, the one that works brilliantly and as advertised is Touch Mouse Mate.

Touch Mouse Mate (TMM) is a project started by Lex Li. It is based on a utility released by J5, an Italian developer, and has many new features and improvements made by Lex and other contributors.

TMM has three features:

• Middle-click: It triggers the middle-click function when the left touch area and the right touch area are tapped at the same time.
• Touch-over-click: This function translates your touch gesture to physical clicks.
• Left hand: It has support for left-handed users.

At the time of writing this article, the latest version of TMM was 1.5 beta and had no option to start TMM with Windows, but expect a lot of improvements in the coming months.

Download TMM from CodePlex.

Note: For Windows 8 users, Microsoft has released Device Center, which gives you an option to enable middle-click, but you have to sacrifice left- or right-click.

Update: We did a detailed review of the Microsoft Touch Mouse. Read it here.