BeigeJournal

As I mentioned earlier, I have a new Logitech Cordless optical Click“!” mouse. I’m really happy with it, finding it a much bigger improvement over my old mechanical, corded, three-button mouse than I expected.

The optical sensor works great, on almost any surface. Searching for some surface it won’t work on, I found that it is unreliable on a clean mirror. That’s about it. The range of the radio link is at least as big as the room I have my computer in. I have not yet tried it with the HF ham radio transmitting. It can connect to the computer by PS/2 port or USB. I’m currently using PS/2, though I suppose I’ll switch to USB next time I’m installing a new OS kernel.

I have gotten X11 to recognize the extra button, and imwheel will map it, but imwheel tends to die often for reasons unknown. I’ve mapped it to page down. Years ago, when I read a lot of Usenet news using nn, I had an old serial mouse connected to my multiport board and a program I hacked together (open source is wonderful, providing me with mouse driver guts to use) to map clicks to X keypress events, so I could hit space, n, and a few others from a second mouse in my lap rather than having to keep my hands up on the keyboard. People thought I was strange, but I really liked it, and a wireless mouse with a wheel and maybe a few extra buttons could do similar things, particularly an optical mouse that works on your leg. Sit back, relax, and read.

A wireless optical is also nice when the usual operating position is blocked.

I sometimes sing and play guitar with spectrum analysis software running for practice purposes, and with the music stand and mikes in the way it is rather hard to reach around to use the mouse to tweak the software. Now I can just grab the mouse and use it anywhere.

I can also toss it over to the other side of the keyboard and use it left handed to give my right hand a rest. Cordless opticals ought to be symmetrical, since it is so easy to use them on either side, and this one is.

Highly recommended.