Logitech Mx 1000 Laser Cordless Mouse

...the plunge and bought a Logitech MX1000 Cordless Laser Mouse to go with my Logitech Media Keyboard. I bought it from Ebuyer for £38.37 plus £3.83 Super Saver delivery. The price now is £35.69 plus delivery. They like to drop prices AFTER I buy the items. Anyway, you can also find it in the high street in Dixons, PC World, etc but usually more expensive. I also found it at CCL Online for the Ebuyer haters.

The mouse has a non-obtrusive ...
...to a variety of other Logitech products.

I fully charged the mouse using the base station on first use. The base station and mouse design are so compatible you can pretty much 'drop' the mouse in position effortlessly. Once charged, plug the mouse into an available USB port or use the 'USB to PS/2' adapter to connect it to your mouse PS/2 port at the back of your computer if you want to save a USB port for something else. Then press ... more

I've only ever owned wired Mice for fear of poor battery life, but I recently took the plunge and bought a Logitech MX1000 Cordless Laser Mouse to go with my Logitech Media Keyboard. I bought it from Ebuyer for £38.37 plus £3.83 Super Saver delivery. The price now is £35.69 plus delivery. They like to drop prices AFTER I buy the items. Anyway, you can also find it in the high street in Dixons, PC World, etc but usually more expensive. I also found it at CCL Online for the Ebuyer haters.

The mouse has a non-obtrusive Logitech logo on the top. The Left and Right-click buttons are part of the casing / shell so you do not see where the buttons begin. I think this design looks really nice compared to normal mice where it is obvious where the left and right buttons begin as indicated by a gap. The black area seems to be made of some sort of rubber grip, minus the friction as it's very smooth. This combined with the curves makes it such a sexy mouse Anyway…I think the design looks very stylish compared to the standard look of most mice. The MX1000 is sure to impress.

SETTING UP

When you buy the mouse, you receive a really nice looking box with lots of shiny special effects. It really is a beautiful box, but anyway... inside, you'll find the MX1000 mouse, base station charger, power adapter, USB to PS2 adapter, software CD, installation guide, safety guide, a small brochure tempting you to a variety of other Logitech products.

I fully charged the mouse using the base station on first use. The base station and mouse design are so compatible you can pretty much 'drop' the mouse in position effortlessly. Once charged, plug the mouse into an available USB port or use the 'USB to PS/2' adapter to connect it to your mouse PS/2 port at the back of your computer if you want to save a USB port for something else. Then press the 'Reset' button on the base station and the 'Reset' button underneath the mouse for them to connect. (Six weeks of owning and using the mouse, I've not had to touch the 'Reset' button again since as it has always worked).

I had to install the SetPoint software on the CD provided and drivers to be able to use the MX1000 to its full potential (but I've found the mouse to work even without it). Base station works even without power as it can draw it from the USB port but the mouse has to be charged as not plugging in the power means you cannot charge the mouse. The software was easy to install and just involves accepting a user agreement and a series of 'next' buttons. I already had my Logitech keyboard and the SetPoint software installed from that and so the software that came with the mouse simply merged into the existing Logitech software.

FEATURES

The MX1000 has 8 buttons. The standard Left and Right-click buttons, a scroll wheel that's also the middle button, 'Cruise' up and down buttons, Back and Forward and an Application Switching button just above where you would position your thumb. All the buttons other than the Left and Right-click buttons can be programmed to do something else. The scroll wheel can even move left and right by tilting the scroll wheel left or right. I think this is very unique and is something I've never seen on a mouse. I love it! It makes it so much easier to scroll across large images.

The 'Cruise' buttons are also very cool and lets you move up and down documents or zoom in and out of images by holding the button down. I use it to move down articles/reviews I read but at first, it was so fast I kept missing the areas I wanted. The SetPoint software is so straight forward to use that it was easy to slow down the cruising. I don't particularly like scrolling with the wheel so I cruise!

By default, the middle button (scroll wheel) is set with the 'Zoom' function. You press it, and then scroll the wheel up or down to zoom up or down. I didn't like this as it meant I couldn't use the middle click to open new tabs in Firefox and Opera, or auto scroll up and down documents, so I reprogrammed the button to be the 'middle button', which is the standard function of must scroll wheel mice. You can zoom in and out using the scroll wheel without wasting the setting by holding the 'Ctrl' key while scrolling so the 'Zoom' function isn't necessary. The buttons can also be programmed to perform keystrokes of your choice (e.g. Ctrl + B to bold) or assign common tasks like Copy, paste, Close Program, etc.

I've found that the Back and the Forward buttons only work with Internet Explorer. As I seem to use Firefox and Opera more, this is a bit annoying. My old optical mouse is able to navigate back and forward when browsing the web using Firefox so I think Logitech should make their buttons more universal.

The Application Switch button is like Alt + Tab on your keyboard allowing you to jump between running programs. It's better than Alt + Tab though since you can click on the programs in the box that pops up! Furthermore, you can set stuff like mouse pointer trails, acceleration speed, speed, scrolling size, mouse pointer speed, Side-to-side scrolling speed and more!

BATTERY LIFE

After extensive testing (or some might call it wasting my youth surfing the net), I've found the battery life to be very good. On a full charge, the battery lasts me 2-3 days of quite frequent usage. A full charge takes just over 2 hours but if the battery goes dead, a 10 minute charge can last a fair amount of time (a full day's use I keep reading). Store the mouse on the base station when you're out and you wouldn't even have to worry about battery life! A very nice feature is the battery indicator on the mouse, which shows me how much battery power remains.

When the battery is near empty the red LED lights up at the bottom of the bar in place of the green light. Whenever the mouse is idle for 10 seconds, it goes to sleep to save power. Moving the mouse or pressing a button on it wakes it up again. If you are going away for a while, you can turn off the mouse completely using the switch underneath. Not only that but the software can even tell how full the battery is and even warn you when it is low on power by flashing in the System Tray. 3 day life would be bad (and expensive) if you were using batteries but that's why this is rechargeable!

COMFORT

The MX1000 is beautifully moulded to accommodate someone's right hand. It looks as though it is made for medium to large sized hands but smaller hands shouldn't be a problem. The shape is 'natural' so whenever I place my hand on the mouse, my fingers and thumb naturally fall into the intended places. Thumb just beneath the Next / Back / Application Switch buttons, index and middle finger over the Left and Right-click buttons. And lastly remaining two fingers drop to the right of the mouse, where it's even moulded with a subtle bump to separate the two fingers without you realising until you look closely. It's a full-size mouse and is slightly heavier than regular mice, optical or otherwise, but as you slide it around, it isn't too bad. The added weight makes it feel more robust.

It seems this mouse is only designed for right handed people (sorry lefties). They can still use it but the mouse doesn't really accommodate the left hand. The software does not even let you swap the buttons around so lefties should either learn to use their right hand or look for another mouse.

My only quibble is that the left corner of the 'MX LASER' sticker (the very stiff type) at the back of the mouse keeps sticking up thus pricking my hand. I push it back down whenever it sticks up but aside that, I don't suffer from any other discomforts when using the mouse.

USING

The MX1000 is proclaimed to be the world's first 'Laser' mouse, and when you look underneath it, there is no red light. In fact, there's no light at all. Sliding the mouse randomly and very quickly shows no signs of the mouse pointer not keeping up on screen like I've experienced with some optical mice. Also, there is no 'lag', where it takes a second for the pointer to move after moving the mouse. Classic example is when the mouse is asleep, so I move the mouse to wake it up. I then have to move it a second time before it responds. That is very annoying, as you expect the pointer to move straight away, not after the second move. That doesn't happen with the MX1000 as it wakes up a lot more quickly. Logitech claim it to be 20 times more sensitive than optical mice. From comparing the MX1000 with my cheapo optical £8 mouse off eBay, I have found that it is far more accurate. When navigating a video by dragging the seek bar a very tiny bit, I've found that the optical mouse either goes too far or goes nowhere. On many occasions, I ended up in the same spot on the video. This never happened with the MX1000 as it detected the smallest of movements without lagging.

One time, the mouse pointer became all jerky. I thought my computer was 'busy' with something but I still had my old optical mouse plugged in so tried using that. The mouse pointer was moving smoothly so it wasn't my computer. The MX1000 was fully charged so it wasn't a power issue. It turned out it was too far away from the base station, which acts as the receiver as well as being the charger. The mouse works even from a distance of 1 metre but not always fluently. Any further than 50cm - 60cm and the mouse pointer movement became very jerky. However, it seems that this is not always the case. Sometimes I can move 1 metre back and it still worked smoothly so it may be because of obstructions. I've since discovered that metal objects mess up the signal a bit. Using my stainless steel mouse mat also reduces the working range of the mouse! Otherwise, it has a very good range of over 2 metres. I have found that it works up to 4 metres 7 centimetres back and quite smoothly too but on some surfaces, it only worked up to around 2.5 metres. This is still acceptable. I've found that it works on most surfaces but like optical mice, it would not work on shiny surfaces such as mirrors.

CONCLUSION

The MX1000 is an excellent mouse. It's comfortable, responsive, has an impressive array of features, good battery life and is rechargeable so no batteries to worry about. This is the most expensive mouse I've ever owned but it is also the best I've ever used so if you've got the money, get this mouse! I would have liked a few more extra buttons since there are so many things I could program but never mind. I can still give this mouse an impressive eight out of 10. Two points deducted for the stiff sticker peeling up and the lack of compatibility with some non-Microsoft programs.

Thanks for reading!

 

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