When Apple announced the Magic Trackpad back in July, many people thought it could spell the end for the humble mouse.

But since then Microsoft has hit back with the Arc Touch Mouse, which scored pretty well in our comprehensive review and now, over at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the computer giant has announced its latest pointer - the Microsoft Touch Mouse.

The Touch Mouse was born out of the Mouse 2.0 project, which was a study to combine the standard capabilities of a mouse with multi-touch sensing and resulted in five prototypes.

The Touch Mouse has multi-touch capabilities and can differentiate between one, two or three fingers so offers up advanced controls.

One finger will let you deal with individual documents or pages by flicking to quickly scroll, pan and tilt, and one thumb lets people move back or forward in your browser. You deploy two fingers to manage your open windows with maximise, minimise, snap and restore commands all available and three fingers allows you to navigate your entire desktop, seeing what you've got open and letting you tidy things up.

“The new Touch Mouse is a great way for customers to interact naturally with their Windows 7-based PC,” said Mark Relph, senior director of the Windows Developer and Ecosystem team at Microsoft.

“We worked closely with the Microsoft Hardware team to help develop the multi-touch gestures that make Windows 7 easier, simpler and more fun to use. After just a few minutes with this mouse you’ll see why.”

The Microsoft Touch Mouse will cost £69.99, but you've got a fair old wait until you can get your fingers on it - it's not out until June.

Keep up to date with all the Vegas launches using our dedicated CES homepage.