For the entirety of my computing life(a little over 10 years now) I have never used anything more than a cheap 2 button optical mouse. Then about 4 months ago I bought an iMac. It came with their not so new anymore Mighty Mouse. After 4 months of using the Mighty Mouse I think it is the worst Apple product I have ever come across. I found myself wanting my cheap 2 button mouse again! I never bought into the $50-100 mice. I figured they don’t really point or click any better. I stumbled across a review of the Logitech MX Revolution at http://paulstamatiou.com and thought I might have found a reason to spend more than $10 on a mouse. This thing has 12 configurable buttons. That’s right, 12! That includes two regular buttons, a 5 way scroll wheel, a ‘quick search’ button, a back and forward button, and a 3 way toggle wheel.
That’s my setup so far. I’ve only had it for a few hours though, after a few days I might change some things if they don’t work out. Here are some details on what all those mean.
- Normal left click
- Normal right click
- Standard scroll wheel with velocity free wheel
- Middle click on scroll wheel, configured to open the application switcher( command + tab )
- Tilt left on scroll wheel, set to scroll horizontally to the left
- Tilt right on scroll wheel, set to scroll horizontally to the right
- Back button by thumb, configured to firefox back key combo ( command + back arrow )
- Forward button by thumb, configured to firefox forward key combo( command + forward arrow )
- Logitech One Touch Search button, configured to toggle dashboard
- Thumb wheel toggle forward, configured to show desktop via expose
- Thumb wheel toggle backward, configured to show all windows via expose
- Thumb wheel toggle click, configured to start a skitch crosshair snapshot ( shift + command + 5 )
A few things might not make sense, for example the velocity scroll wheel. The logitech software allows you to configure the scroll wheel so that at a certain speed it unlocks the ratcheting mechanism and spins freely, making for very fast scrolling. The horizontal scrolling will probably be removed once I figure out what to put in place of them. I never used it on my mighty mouse either. The thumb toggle wheel might not make sense either. It’s shaped like a scroll wheel, but it does not scroll at all. You can push it forward a little and have it pop back, or you can push it back a little and it will pop back. It also appears to have two different thresholds of activation. If I start pushing it backwards, it will show all my windows, and I can mouse to one, and then release the wheel and it will deactivate expose with the selected window active. I can also push the button all the way back and let it go, activating expose until I perform another action. Make it very easy to get a quick look at the desktop or switch windows quickly. The last thing I want to talk about is the skitch crosshair snapshop. If you’re not familiar with skitch it’s a screenshot utility that lets you upload straight to flickr( or other photo sharing sites ) after taking it. When I click that button it opens two cross hairs which I can use to select an area and take a screen shot. I can also left click on any window to grab just that window, or right click anywhere to grab the entire desktop. So I now have one click access to any type of screen shot I want to take without even having to think about it. In short, I am in love with this mouse and I highly recommend it to anyone with a computer.
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