Whenever my father (raised on '40s radio programs) sees something that impresses him, he chimes, "Why that's slicker than snot on a gold tooth." The formulation puzzled me in my early youth, amused me when I realized that fathers weren't supposed to say 'snot,' and eventually came to irritate me through overuse. I swore never to use the phrase myself.

Then again, I swore never to become a corporate shill either. But it turns out that I don't have to write this review in order to become a corporate shill; I've been a word-of-mouth corporate shill since I bought the Logitech cordless mouse last week. I can't help mentioning the mouse when people call or in my responses to email. "You have to get this mouse," I find myself saying and typing over and over. And I mean it: You--YES YOU--have to get this mouse right now. If you're reading this review, it means that you do read text on the internet, and the wheel of the Logitech mouse makes reading text on the internet as effortless and enjoyable as you probably delude yourself into thinking that it already is.

I'll tackle the features one at a time:

The Wheel

If you're still using the embarrassingly primitive two-button mouse that came with your machine, then let's review what usually happens as you try to read a page of text with a vertical scroll bar:

1) You click to the page of text you want and immediately drag your mouse across the mousepad so that the cursor hovers just over the bottom arrow cursor, so that you can jump down a chunk-of-text-per-click instead of a line-of-text-per-click.

2) Having found that 'sweet spot' on the vertical scroll bar, you lock your right arm (unless you're one of those Ned Flanders type people) into an uncomfortably rigid pose so that you can concentrate on reading, not on mousework.

3) The hilarious epinions essay that you are reading by some strange man in a fez prompts you to laugh so hard that your body shakes, but you make every effort not to let your right arm participate in the laughter because you want to be able to click down to the next screen of text as soon as you're ready for it. If you stray from the sweet spot, you'll lose the rhythm of the piece you're reading.

4) Your right arm likes to laugh too, so it defies you and participates in the shaking laughter of your body. The cursor floats a few millimeters off to the left without your knowledge.

5) You click; nothing happens. You're ready for the next bit of text, but the screen just sits there, unflinching. Then you have to look away from the text to the cursor and make your adjustments and bring a new screen of text into view.

6) Not certain where you were in your reading, you choose a line at random. Oops! It's the punchline to a joke that you accidentally missed the set-up for by scrolling too far ahead in the article.

The Moral: I used to put up with this kind of nonsense without even knowing what an inconvenience it was. But then I visited friends who had the Logitech cordless mouse, and I used their computer to do a little internet research. The wheel feature of the Logitech mouse enabled me to scroll up and down extremely long pages of text without having to lock my cursor over the sweet spot on the scrolling bar.

Even if you don't get the cordless mouse, you should definitely pick up a mouse with a wheel.

The Thumb Button

Look at the screen you're reading right now. If you're using a traditional mouse, your cursor is almost certainly down near the bottom right corner of the screen so that you can scroll through this review. When you're through, you might click on one of the links at the bottom of the page (certainly the authors of those reviews are hoping so), but if you're anything like me, the button you use most frequently while on line is the BACK button, which is way over at the top left corner of the screen.

Go BACK right now.

I defy you.

I double dog dare you.

Too much trouble? You don't want to drag your cursor all the way from the bottom right corner of the screen up to the BACK button? Well you could have wowed me with your BACK prowess if only your mouse had the nifty thumb feature of the Logitech cordless mouse, a button that runs along the side of the mouse for your thumb.

I like a mouse that puts my thumb to work. My thumb is definitely a team player; it wants to participate. It's just been relegated to the status of a sinecure by the traditional two-button mouse.

The Cordlessness

Some people will not benefit from this feature. If you keep a fairly tidy desk and put a little thought into the placement of your mouse's cord, I suppose it's possible to have a tangle-free computer experience. But not for me. I drink coffee at the computer. I make notes on a pad. I use a calculator. Sometimes my desk gets cluttered, and it's just plain handy not to have to thread my mouse cord through all of that junk.

But the cordlessness of the mouse is particularly handy when I'm playing turn-based video games with a friend on a single computer. No longer do we have to adjust our seating arrangement between turns so as to share the mouse effectively. We can pass the mouse back and forth between turns without running the risk of snapping out of our zombie-like fixation on the game.

Conclusions

If you don't go buy this mouse right now, you're an idiot, and I won't like you anymore. Thanks for your attention.



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 49