Evaluation:  
Conclusion: A handy tool for making movies in Second Life
Review: The SpaceNavigator PE is perhaps most useful if you have a goal in mind beforehand -- for example, a current 3D app you use is driving you crazy when you try to interface with the keyboard + mouse, and you've noticed the SpaceNavigator is supported. The price is very reasonable and I wouldn't be surprised to see that help this device and others like it get more popular.
I primarily use the SN with Second Life, where it's supposed with version 1.20 (the current "main viewer", altho some people still use 1.19.1). Yes, I'm the Torley Linden you may've seen mentioned who made video tutorials for this, and I recommend Residents who want to get the most out of the SN should visit, learn from, and add to: [...]
One of the BIGGEST benefits to having the SN with Second Life is smooth, versatile camera tracking motion for machinima (creating movies inworld). In Flycam mode, you can pan, zoom, and do all sorts of crazy things like spin the camera around until you get drowsy. By customizing the setup, you can increase the cam feathering so it coasts along, or have it act more "tightly". You can (one of my faves) also disable Auto-Level and tilt it slightly so the horizon isn't perfectly straight -- this adds a subtle (or more dramatic) yet very welcome dynamic nuance to still snapshots, too.
I don't use the Avatar movement or Build modes very much at all, but they're available if you want them.
The build quality and overall design is pretty sleek. At the beginning, I was a bit confused by how easy it was to combine actions, and kept pushing and twisting the cap at the same time -- as I got more experienced, I found this to be very handy, but keep in mind that the SN does give you "6 degrees of freedom" and you can articulate yourself smoothly with that.
For Second Life, at least on a Windows-based system, remember that if the SN is moving your avatar, even if you aren't touching it, you may need to go to the 3DxWare Panel in Windows' Control Panels and calibrate it. Another thing is specifically in SL, in Edit menu > Preferences > Input & Camera tab, make sure to setup things to your taste in there. I do have the latest version of the official drivers installed so the blue light indicates when it's on, as well as compatibility with other apps, but it should work fairly well with SL out of the box.
Have fun! ;D
Evaluation:
Conclusion: Excellent for GoogleEarth on PC Vista and Mac
Review: We are using this for GoogleEarth on PC and Mac, and it makes moving around and zooming in and out really fast. Very intuitive, even 8 year old kids can use it with great joy on GoogleEarth.
Evaluation:
Conclusion: 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator for Second Life
Review: This "joystick" is awesome when used in Second Life. It moves, guides and flies your avatar. Even better, it allows you to cam smoothly across the sim, through walls, below the surface and even 100s of meters into the sky. Great for making "movies" or simply for exploring. Highly recommended! (Be sure to watch the Torley Linden tutorials.)
Evaluation:
Conclusion: good and bad
Review: when you buy a new controler for your PC there are always a few factors to consider, for one you are extremely used to your mouse and keyboard and after years and years of use almost everything seems less functional.
I can't think of any other device like that which would be so natural to use (it takes perhaps about 15min to become comfortable with it)
It works with 3D packages rather nicely, (I am using Maya PE and Sketch Up), for other application it doesn't do much, ocasional pan/zoom capabilities are typically less useful than using a mouse to pan or zoom
The device seems a little too sensitive on default setting (which can be corrected), however the control panel leaves a lot to be desired, other than sensitivity you have an option to reverse the axis and that's pretty much all, considering that even the default integration with a few programs assingns axes differently (especially moving up down in screen space can be achived by pushing forward/backward or pulling up/pushing down dempends which software you are using)
Unfortunatelly the device does not have a generic driver which would act as HID device, after working in 3D package for a few hours you switch to internet explorer for a moment and your hand goes automatically to this little device to pan... and nothing happens...
There is also a little issue with pan and tilt, since both are essentially done by pushing the controler at different angles, it's not uncommon that you end up tilting and paning in the same time while your intent was just pan, while device seems to have a small dead-zone which allows you to pan without changing the camera angle, this dead zone appears to be not enough in many cases (and it's not configurable)
In short, it's an amazing concept, well designed from hardware perspective, poorly designed from software perspective, but still very handy to have in 3D applications which supports it
Evaluation:
Conclusion: 3-D mouse
Review: The product worked flawlessly as specified in the brochure. I am very happy with it.
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