10 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
A Tale of Two Mice
Date of Review: Dec 18, 2008
The Bottom Line: My experience with the LX7 is very mixed. Look for a product with consistently high marks. Gambling $50 on unreliable mice does not seem prudent.
Folks - let me start out with some basic information. I am a professional in the computer industry, with experience going back to the days of punch cards, paper tape, teletypes and time-sharing. I've worked for some of the biggest names in high tech, and have been the "go to" person for all sorts of issues with computers, home entertainment products and the occassional kids' toy. But enough about me ... this is the story of two LX7 mice from Logitech. A black mouse, that died a painful death in my home, and a beautiful dark blue mouse, that continues (so far) to provide me with outstanding service after a couple of years at the office.
The blue mouse was my first LX7. I purchased it to replace a cheap, generic corded mouse that came with a new HP computer. What I actually did was to purchase an inexpensive cordless Logitech keyboard and mouse ensemble, and I found the keyboard to be great, but the mouse was poor weighted, limited in features, and not overly responsive. I did some research, and given the almost completely positive feedback on the LX7, I plopped down a U.S. Grant note, and took Mr. Blue to work.
The mouse feels good in my hand, I like the positioning of the two programmable buttons on the mouse, which I use to go forwards and backwards with web browsers, I find my pointing to be accurate, and the scroll wheel has a very smooth feel. Battery life has been outstanding - more than the 8 months expected. The mouse has always "played well with others", not having any kind of interference with the separate wireless keyboard. If Mr. Blue had been my ONLY LX7, I would have rated this product substantially higher.
A couple of monthis after I purchased Mr. Blue, it was time to replace a keyboard used at home - where two desktop computers reside full time, and two laptops operate part time. (One goes to the office with me .. the other comes over on the weekends with my son.) The wireless mouse that came with my new wireless Microsoft keyboard, not unlike the mouse the preceeded Mr. Blue, proved itself inferior to the LX7 in almost all respects (options/controls.. battery life.. feel in the hand.) And so, our hero headed down to Fry's (see - I'm the real deal!), to find a mouse clone. It was there that I discovered Mr. Black.
Mr. Black, along with the new keyboard and a print server, got set up using a KVM switch, to allow me to use both my desktop system and my laptop, without too much stuff in too little work space. Initially, everything was good in the world. Mr. Black could surf the web with the best of them, he handled precise work with programs like Paintshop with ... well with precision .. and batteries were not breaking the bank.
And then it happened. Mr. Black went through a sudden, complete and horrible transition, from valued hardware, to paltry paperweight. And he left me with very little warning.
What happened first was that this mouse started becoming very "jumpy" using Firefox. It was kind of weird, and very frustrating. You would select a bookmark, and suddenly, you lost the ability to select web links. An alt-ctrl-del key sequence would restore the links for a while, but this assumed that I refrained from using my bookmarks. Since I did not initially see the same behavior with Internet Explorer and other software, I quickly assumed that I had somehow messed up my computer settings, or a new version of something I had installed had an evil bug. So - I tried things like doing an XP restore, but nothing helped. In fact, Mr. Black's performance only grew darker and darker.
As I mentioned before, the mouse was being used with two computers. That was a good hint about what was really going on. The same bad behavior was exhibited by both machines. I tired things like trying to be sure that the "pinhole" at the base of the mouse had a clear view of everything below it, I re-installed my drivers, etc., and I tried removing the mouse from the KVM switch, using it only with one PC. Still bad.
Finally, I went ahead and put an old, corded mouse into the PC, and immeduiately it worked well. Yes, Mr. Black was ill.
The next day, I brought Mr. Blue home from work, and tried him with my home set up, to try to confirm that my issues were with my mouse and not with something in the home equipment. Mr. Blue worked as well as ever. I also learned that the "node" that comes with each LX7 operates on its own frquency. I could not switch mice and nodes, to determine which of them was the problem child.
Honestly, I still like many Logitech products. The speakers I got for the kids' PC cost only about $15, but they are rich and clear. The high def webcam is superb. Both the keyboard and the LX7 (blue) at work have been as good as gold. But the mouse that failed, after less than a year of service, and good care .. will make me think twice about its replacement.
