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I picked up this Logitech MX 610 mouse a few months ago at buy.com for $30 after rebate. Since I’ve been using it awhile I decided it’s time for a review.

First, just a note about the purchase experience. Buy.com does this thing where it’s free shipping for their “7-9 day” service and they try to upsell you to their faster shipping. I didn’t fall for it and opted to just wait the extra time. Turns out it shipped from Illinois and I literally received it overnight. I’m sure that doesn’t happen all the time, but geez. I’m not complaining but it seems like they’re missing the boat on something here.

So, I’ve been using this mouse every day for five months, mainly for standard office tasks and development work. I’m not a gamer, so I have no idea how well it works for playing games. I use it on a traditional mouse pad, nothing fancy.

The Positives

Overall the performance is very good, it tracks extremely well and has a nice feel. I was looking for something bigger than a standard mouse to help with ergonomics and it does help, but there are better mice out there if you’re main focus is ergonomics.

The buttons also have a good feel to them and are easly to click. This is the first mouse I’ve had that has the side-to-side scroll on the wheel. At first I had a hard time getting used to it, but now it is not a problem. It also has buttons for volume control, email, IM and back/next. These are all programmable with the software and the email and IM buttons light up.

During the five months I’ve only had to change the batteries once, so not what they advertise, but sufficient.

The wireless range is also very good. I’ve never had any connection problems. It easily works over six feet away without a problem.

The Negatives

One thing I wish it has was a stowable receiver. I was traveling around with it quite a bit and it this would have been a nice feature. Here’s another pic.

The driver software is the major negative with this mouse. The first disappointment is that the email light only works with Outlook. I use Thunderbird, so I’m out of luck there. The other odd problem I had was that there seems to be some conflict with MS ActiveSync. If they are both running, the first time after booting when I sync my PDA I have this weird condition where the active application looses and gains focus once every couple seconds. If I close the Logitech software, the problem goes away. I’ve tried this on two machines with the same result. So, the big drawback here is that if I change the function of the buttons, they only work when the Logitech software is running.

There’s a thread on the Logitech Website that talks about this issue. It looks like this has been going on for a long time still with no resolution.

I of course tried updating to the latest drivers, which also brings up another point. If at all possible, I always check the website first for the latest version of the software. In this case, the mouse shipped with version 2.42a, however the latest on their site is 4.0.

Recommendation

I would still give this buy recommendation, despite the driver problem. It’s a good piece of hardware, I can only hope they improve their driver, but I won’t hold my breath.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 7:06 pm and is filed under Computers, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.