If you’ve been following this blog for several years (may God have mercy on your soul), then you’re aware of my ongoing mission to find the perfect mouse. I’m beginning to think this quest is an impossible task.
If you remember, my last two attempts were a couple of Microsoft mice, with the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Laser Mouse 7000 (what a mouth full) being the weak winner, whose only negative I could find was the loosely scrolling scroll-wheel.
I was out shopping a month or two ago at London Drugs, and picked up a Logitech LX8 Cordless Laser Mouse. I’ve been using it steadily since then, giving it a pretty good work out, playing WoW for a few hours each night and making full use of every feature of the mouse.
First, it’s got the ambidextrous design that I prefer, with comfortable padding that fits my grip perfectly (i.e. no unnecessary lips of plastic you find on the form-fitted, non-ambidextrous mice).
It’s not designed as a notebook mouse, so it’s about 2cm longer than the perfectly-sized MS7000, but it’s size is still within the bounds of reason.
Both the MS7000 and the LX8 use a USB dongle for a proprietary wireless connection, but with my history of Bluetooth mice, I’ve found Bluetooth to not really live up to its promise, and have come to the conclusion that these proprietary dongles work far better.
Unfortunately, like the MS7000, it doesn’t have built-in recharging of any kind. It takes 2 AA’s to the MS7000’s 1 AA, so it’s a little heavier than MS7000 with that extra battery in there, but I suppose that means it probably lasts twice as long between battery replacements.
Whereas the MS7000 uses it’s dongle to snap to the underside of the mouse to accomplish two tasks (shuts off power, and great for travel), the LX8’s dongle has no ability to snap onto the mouse unit. This would’ve been a great feature, even though the LX8 is technically not a notebook mouse (where this snap-on feature predominantly lies), as I’m sure they could’ve added it to the design if they wanted to given the (really tiny) size of the dongle and the larger size of the mouse itself.
However, having said that, the LX8 does have a button underneath, which you press for a full second or so to turn on and off. To save on battery life, I prefer to manually shut off the power of my wireless mice (when docking to a charging base station isn’t an option, of course), and having used the MS7000 for a few months, always plugging and unplugging that dongle was starting to become a bit of a nuisance (remember I’m using this mouse for my desktop, and not a laptop). Thus, I actually like how the LX8 works instead, as I can leave the dongle in 24/7.
My MS7000 has buttons on either side of the mouse, which I became to rely for my WoW keybindings. The LX8 also has buttons on the side, and because of where I grip my mice (between thumb and ring finger at the bottom of the mouse) they’re actually placed perfectly where I can hit them easily, but not accidentally.
The scroll wheel on the LX8 has all the same features as the MS7000, and by that I mean it also has left and right pressing, which is also great for playing WoW. What’s better about the LX8 scroll wheel, though, is that there’s more resistance to any of its movements, so no more accidental clicks or scrolls that happened all the time with the MS7000. For me, this is the best part about the LX8 (and Logitech’s scroll wheels in general).
Lastly, a bit about the software. Ever since the Logitech Control Center (LCC) debacle of Late 2007, I’ve been wary of installing any of Logitech’s drivers of any kind, as they used to piggy-back on something called APE, which was incompatible with Mac OS X Leopard when it first came out, causing a lot of Leopard users to suddenly not be able to start up their Macs after upgrading if they had Logitech mice with the default install (Whoops!). It sounds like Logitech no longer uses APE for its LCC, but I still didn’t bothering installing it. Instead, and for many years now, I use a third-party driver/utility called USB Overdrive which works great and allows you to remap buttons, all without the need to install features that manufacturers don’t understand why we don’t love them. Other options are SteerMouse and ControllerMate, which I haven’t tried, but are still worth mentioning. Of course, if you don’t care about the extra buttons, and just want the left-click, right-click, and scroll wheel (why did you buy it then?), you don’t have to install any drivers, as the built-in OS X mouse driver works just fine (even though Apple doesn’t provide two-button mice themselves) as long as the mouse adheres to published HCI standards (which was probably more of an issue back in the late 90s when USB support was still very much the Wild West).
I’m beginning to think I should buy a few of these just to hoard them in case they ever start to break down (yes, I like the LX8 that much). But out of all the mice I’ve used over the last 25 years, I’ve only had one go bad on me that I can remember, so I don’t think it’s really necessary.