What ever happened to Logitech

I respected these guys more than almost any other IT firm I know. Many years ago I had the pleasure of attending a press trip out to the States and visiting their facilities in a couple of different cities. It was very interesting to see how mice, joysticks and speakers etc come off the drawing board, onto prototypes and finally things you can buy. They also seemed to be great people who actually gave a damn about what they were doing.

That said, after the height of the Dinovo (probably one of the bravest consumer tech launches I can recall) what’s happened since? Well, I tell you what, I’m absolutely amazed I can’t just buy something from these guys that would be a decent couch laser mouse suitable for gaming. Previously I used the MX900 from the Dinovo, this had a good wireless range so worked nicely but the resolution was pretty darn bad and it chewed a set of batteries once every couple of days (so I had a recharger sat nearby to swap batteries).

I thought it was really time I moved up to something a bit more accurate and hopefully something I wouldn’t need to stoke with batteries. Their range is kinda baffling but wireless wise there’s really only the aging G9 and I vetoed that because it uses lithium ions, you have to use their charger, and it chews through those rapidly apparently. So I gave the MX1100 a go. It’s a pretty high end wireless laser mouse. Waaay better battery life, for a start it has an on/off switch which helps.

However it’s got a properly mind-fuck issue, it is absolutely utterly completely hopeless at fine mouse control. What the fuck? It’s a high end laser mouse. It took me awhile to work this out, I thought maybe the laser didn’t work on my couch right (in fact, bizarrrely, it doesn’t but the G5 does), or it was wi-fi range (it just has a shit little dongle), but in the end it was this fine control thing. This makes it actually irritating to use in Windows and absolutely worthless in games.

So what did I do? Well, I decided on a long shot to take the G5 home from work and try that on the couch, and just lump the cable so I could work out if a laser mouse would be okay on the couch. Well it is, it’s absolutely bloody fantastic in fact. So I sit here at work with the MX1100 irritating me so I can use the G5 at home…

How does something as fucked as this end up being released by Logitech? I’ve no idea. I guess I should trawl ebay for a cheap G5 to replace this thing at work too…