We have mice with no balls! Umm. let me rephrase that.
We take a look at 3 new mouse offerings from Logitech, all sporting new optical
technology. Want crisp response, and no more mouse cleaning? How about "FEELING"
your desktop? These might be just what you are looking for!
Mice! If you have a PC, you have one of these little
critters (unless you are REALLY into keyboard shortcuts :D). Treating yourself
to a better one than you currently own, is often as helpful to your daily
routine, as adding more memory, a faster processor, ect. With the mouse handling
the largest part of your interaction with your PC, it's a critical part of your
overall computing experience.
I've tried many mice over the years, and have settled
primarily on Microsoft and Logitech mice, as my mice of choice. The quality of
mouse construction is critical in my eyes to such a daily use device, and these
two companies dominate this category, because they build quality. One of the
reasons why quality is important, is that traditionally, mice wear out over
time. Most mice are what are called opto-mechanical mice. You have a rubber
coated ball, which drives rollers on x and y axes. These rollers in turn are
connected to slotted discs, where optical sensors sense the open slots, and
determine movement. All of these moving parts eventually wear out. Not only
that, but even the best mice require periodic cleaning, as the ball and rollers
pick up "gunk" from your mousepad. This is greatly reduced, if you use one of
the hard surface mousepads available now, such as the
Ratpadz, but still periodically necessary.
Last year, Microsoft released a line of mice that
utilize CMOS imaging technology for movement detection, their Optical series.
These mice have become extremely popular among gamers, and avid PC users, due to
their accuracy, and the assumed reliability as a result of the elimination of
moving parts.
Logitech, who is the leader in PC mice and input
devices, certainly doesn't want to be left out of the party. They have released
3 new optical mice this year, and have sent us samples of each of these to
review. But first, a little background on the optical technology that's in these
new mice.
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