When I get a new computer, I generally put away the mouse that came with it and plug in my trusty Logitech MX 500 mouse. Whether it's for filling out TPS Reports, blogging or coding, it's the one mouse I swear by (actually, two mice — one for the Mac, one for the Windows box, but they're both the same make and model). I hear that its button action isn't that hot for games, but since I prefer console gaming these days, thats not a really big problem for me.
As both my Logitechs approach their fourth year of daily use, one of them is showing signs of poor motion tracking while the other's button action is getting a bit “bouncy”. I've been eyeing replacement mice, and the recent new York Times piece on the MX Revolution caught my interest. The article describes it as…
…a high-end mouse designed not for those shooting games, but for an activity far more fearsome: handling the vast pile of reports, Web pages, spreadsheets, e-mail threads and other materials that the average desk jockey can face each day at the office.”
Implicit in that description is that it'll make going through code and ebooks — and I'm going through increasing amounts of them these days — like a hot knife through butter.
The speed boost comes from a new scroll wheel, “a heavy, finely balanced wheel that spins through distances that would normally require many scrolling motions and many minutes,” and software that allows for high-speed “coarse” scrolling — great for zipping through hundreds of pages at high speed — as well as standard “fine” scrolling, when you want to scroll line by line.
As a bonus, it's cordless, unlike my current MX 500s.
The MX revolution requires some software to be installed to take advantage of its hyper-scrolling capabilities. Windows XP is supported out of the box, you have to download the Mac OS X software and there's a Vista beta available from their site (the final version of the Vista driver is promised for January 2007).
The price tag is a bit steep — the Logitech site prices it at US$99 — but considering that I recently blew $60 on an XBox 360 wireless controller that I use nowhere nearly as often as a mouse, it might be worth it.
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