|
Think a computer mouse is just a mouse? Nope, you spend all day on it moving it several hundred feet in a course of a day's work on the PC. Why not get a mouse that comes with features and make your life easier, more efficient, and more productive on the computer. I spent over a month looking for the perfect upgrade to my Logitech MX 300 mouse. I thought it would be easy...boy was I wrong. Hopefully you can all learn from my quest for the perfect mouse. 
My old mouse had its feet worn out and I was getting bothered by the scraping feel everytime I dragged it across my desktop. The mouse was also plain and being a 24/7 hardcore extreme PC user like myself, I began to question myself about whether I was staying up to date in the computer world in the mouse department. I didn't buy a new mouse, I simply put on my Christmas Secret Santa List for 2006 that I wanted a new mouse. Come Christmas Day, one of my good friends gave me a mouse: The Logitech MX 400 Performance Laser Mouse. It was corded just like I asked for and I was excited to see how the new "laser" technology would turn out. Actually, it turned out to be a total piece of crap. The mouse was terrible for games or anything requiring fast accurate movements. The laser felt slow and laggy and the darn thing was extremely unresponsive in my opinion. I did all sorts of tests like playing games that required fast mouse movement and also moved the cursors in patters on my desktop. I made big circles and small circles going both ways and it was so horrible and jumpy. Although it was a corded mouse, the performance was worse and slower than even some wireless mouses I've seen before. The laser tracking was just too crappy. You might say that I was too picky or that I didn't know how to set it up properly. Believe me, I did everything I could to get it to work. I turned off the acceleration the automatic mouse tracking thingy in Windows and the Logitech Setpoint software. I increased and decreased the speed and still nothing. It was just too crappy and sadly, I asked my friend for the gift receipt to go to the store and try something else. The mouse would've been fine for most people, but for a heavy computer user like me...it's a NO-GO. So here I was at BestBuy, and my eyes fell in love with the Logitch MX Revolution "The World's Most Advanced Mouse" was the line on the box. It had all these cool features and extra buttons and had a nice weird shape that fit surprisingly comfortably in my hand. It was wireless which means it looked good. I normally hate and have been despising wireless mouses for some time but I figured hey, it's 2006. Maybe the wireless mouse is now just as fast as wired mouses. I was terribly wrong yet again. The Logitech MX Revolution looked great and had awesome features like the hyperscrolling wheel and the extra buttons and programmable button features. I could make any button on the mouse do just about anything I wanted. There was even 3rd party software to help you really tweak the mouse to do literally ANYTHING you wanted. A button could zoom, scroll, open a program, open a webpage, flip to another document, show desktop, combine key-presses, and anything else you could imagine. What was the problem? The same thing.....I don't know if it was the wireless aspect or the laser technology..once again, the tracking had failed me. It was horribly unaccurately at moving the cursor on my screen just as how I moved the mouse in my hand. The cursor was slow, laggy, jumpy, and just inaccurate and couldn't move the way my hand moved. Drawing circles on my desktop was weird. I fell in love with the features and wanted to like the mouse. I blamed myself for its drawbacks. Saying that I was too critical or that the mouse needed some time to get use to and that I had to train myself to learn how the mouse moves. Days past and my mouse performance was still crap. I found myself learning more and more hotkeys to get tasks done because the mouse jus twasn't moving reliably. I decided that perhaps my mouse was defective, so I went to BestBuy and bought another one. The new one seemed better at first but then I realized that it was just the same thing, same problems, and that simply willing it to be better wasn't going to work. This mouse just had to go and I had to give up the features and look for something else. Back to BestBuy I went. This time I was deciding between 2 on other Logitech models that I read great reviews about online: The MX 518 Gaming mouse and the G5 Laser Mouse. I decided on the MX 518 mouse because I read that many people upgraded to the G5 and G7 and found it to be the same thing but with less buttons. I take home my MX 518 mouse and VOILA! Perfect! I fell in love right away. The shape of the mouse was a bit weird feeling at first but I could use to it. The 2 buttons on the left side of the mouse made surfing websites and navigating through Microsoft Windows folders so much easier. No more moving my mouse a foot across the screen to click the back button, I simply shift my thumb up and press the "BACK" button that I decided on the mouse. There was just enough buttons to do what I wanted and the tracking was great. The MX 518 saved my life, saved me time, and it ended up being perfect after a week of use. Its movement was very reliable and sharp even though it was the "older" optical technology. Laser technology isn't all that great, I tell you, it's just hype. The conclusion: if you're looking for a good, accurate mouse and play games or move your mouse quickly often. The Logitech MX 518 Gaming Performance mouse is a great choice. It works well and has several extra buttons on it that can save you time from doing common tasks on your computer. It passed my tough critical demands for a mouse and I'm sure it will surpass yours. The only downsides is that it isn't wireless (which I hate anyway, because the batteries drain quick or they lag), and that the shape might be too weird for you to overcome. Then again, the shape might just fit your hand perfectly. I can be found for $40 at most online stores and I suggest you give it a try.
 |
