The days of the ubiquitous mouse may be coming to an end.

Those were the thoughts of Steve Prentice, a Gartner analyst, as he walked the floor of the 2008 CES show earlier this year and saw a host of ways, from facial recognition technology to the multitouch capabilities of Apple’s iPhone, to replace the mouse as one of the main ways people interact with the computer.

Prentice collected his ideas in a new paper – “Gestural Computing: The End of the Mouse” – and he told eWEEK that while the mouse is likely to stick around for some time, the alternatives to this device are hard to ignore. In the next two to four years, Prentice believes the switch from mouse to an alternative paradigm will be well underway.

“You put that all together and it becomes fairly clear to me we are seeing a significant move away from the idea of the one- or two-button mouse,” Prentice said in an interview.

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