Logitech MX revolution

Got a new mouse. It's supposed to be a really good mouse with the best scroll wheel out there. The reviews so far have been pretty good but nothing spectacular about it. And after a few hours of using it, I think I like it a lot too.

I have been using a Logitech mouse for some time now and it really feels comfortable in my hand. I had originally planned on buying a Apple Mighty Mouse but dropped the idea since it did not feel nice in my palm. The bluetooth connectivity and laser tracker were nice features in the Might Mouse but the shape was really horrible. It was hard to hold for longer periods and the tiny scroll "nipple" was too small to use properly. Moreover, the side buttons that were meant to be squeezed were not ergonomic at all.

There is another version of the revolution mouse: the VX revolution. That is supposed to be more portable since it is advertised as a laptop mouse. I tried it too but it felt too small to be gripped comfortably. So in the end I forked out $20 more for the MX revolution. No point in trying to save some money when the more expensive one feels so much better.

The only problem I had with this product is the configuration software that Logitech provided. It's the Logitech Control Center and it is a fine piece of broken software. It's previous version LCC2.0 worked fine for my Logitech keyboard but the current version LCC2.1 is a disaster. I cannot even open the keyboard configuration pane without the pane crashing on me. This is not an isolated case since other people have been reporting this problem too. To make matters worse, this control panel installs the APE application for OS X. If you want to use the mouse then you just have to bear with it. I really hate this but there is nothing that can be done since this mouse has very specific properties that only Logitech can configure.

Fortunately, there was not much that I needed to configure on the keyboard. For some of the smart buttons, I just edited the .plist file by hand and reloaded the keyboard driver. More information on how to do this can be found here. Editing the .plist file by hand was really a fun thing to do. You never know when you will break the XML that the file uses.

Apart from the $100 price tag, this mouse is very usable. I like the fact that it comes with a charging station so I do not need to constantly be searching for batteries. Also, the buttons do not require a lot of force to activate. I would prefer if the mouse was less noisy (click, click, click) when scrolling in precision mode. This mouse offers two mode for scrolling: precision mode and free spin mode. In precision mode, it works just like a normal scroll mouse would. But in free spin mode, the scroll wheel disengages from the ratchet and scrolls really fast. The mouse is smart enough to detect when to change modes based on how fast you are moving the wheel. However, engaging and disengaging the ratchet makes loud click sounds that I felt should have been softer.

All in all, this mouse is nice and if you are planning to be in front of your computer for hours a day scrolling through long documents, you should consider getting one. And it is not that bulky that you cannot carry it around with you when you are on the go.