About a year and a half ago, the little computer shop where I worked got in a pair of Logitech MX Revolution mice. These were huge, expensive, wireless mice with one awesome feature – the scroll wheel could be clicked into a free-spinning mode, where one deft movement would let you zip through pages and pages of text or whatever at once.
I couldn’t stand the mouse – it was too big and heavy for me to accurately game with for long periods, I didn’t really need wireless, it sacrificed middle-click to switch the wheel in and out of hyperscroll mode, and did I mention it was expensive? – but that scroll wheel was revolutionary and I sorely missed it for weeks after trying it out for a couple of days.
Fast forward to today – new job, new desk, decent work laptop, and a mouse whose main claims to fame include “Integrated wheel scrolling device” and “Business Black color complements ThinkCentre and ThinkPad systems”. I made it nearly four months with the thing, before deciding to treat myself to something better.
That something turned out to be Logitech’s M500.
In brief: USB, corded, laser optical, Logitech quality. Hyper scrolling is switched on and off with the button on top. And never mind the US$ RRP of $39.99 – I paid AU$35 for mine from PC Case Gear.
Accidentally pressing a mouse’s thumb buttons and browsing back a page in Firefox is a pet peeve of mine, and I still do it occasionally with my G3 at home, but the buttons on the M500 are much higher and harder to hit except entirely on purpose without being out of reach. The cord should be pretty long-lasting – it’s lightweight but not too thin. It ought to survive anything short of being absent-mindedly driven over with an office chair.
Tracking is as good as I could need – my work setup involves two fairly high-res LCDs side by side, and being able to flick accurately between Lotus Notes on one screen and a virtual server half a metre away on the other is pretty essential. My old Lenovo mouse did the job, but this mouse is noticeably better at it.
Conclusion: If you spend eight hours a day with your hand glued to a computer mouse, it better be a good one. Any $35 mouse should kick butt compared to the stock standard thing your work PC came with, but I wasn’t expecting anything with Logitech’s hyper-fast scrolling for that price, and now that they’ve figured out how to let you middle-click despite having it there’s no reason not to choose it over anything else. Recommended.
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