$70 Cordless Notebook Mouse with No Scroll Wheel

superfloungmous writes "CoolTechZone.com has reviewed Logitech's latest V500 Cordless Notebook Mouse that uses 2.4GHz wireless technology to transmit signal and has a scroll panel instead of a scroll wheel. The concept behind a scroll wheel is you simply move your finger in up, down, left and right directions to use the function. The mouse has a whopping $70.00 price tag as well. Could this be the end of scroll wheels? Here's a quote from the review, "One of the unique things about the V500 is its scroll panel, and this is the very first mouse to actually use this concept. Throughout our testing, we are nothing but impressed with Logitech's new idea. It worked perfectly, and it's actually better than a scroll wheel in many instances. It looks like the era of scroll wheels is short-lived if Logitech applies the same design to its desktop equivalent products."

sounds like the iPod interface

[binarstu]

This sounds remarkably like the interface that Apple has devised to allow scrolling through menus, volume control, etc. on their iPod line of products. This isn't surprising, because the interface works extremely well and is very intuitive.

Now if only

[Enigma_Man]

They'd put a small scrollwheel within the touchpad on the mouse, then I could scroll around inside of large forms in a window that I'm scrolling around with.

-Jesse

Re:Laptop touchpads have this as well

[antifoidulus]

The latest revision of powerbooks have a scrolling function built into the touch pad as well(and you can go left and right), you just use 2 fingers instead of one when you want to scroll. I use it and it's quite useful IMO.

I have one

[radish]

The "wheel" works pretty well, it's certainly nice to scroll up and down with, no complaints there. I also like the other design aspects of the mouse - like the tiny transmitter which fits inside the mouse for safe keeping. What I really don't like (being a Firefox user) is the lack of a middle button (which of course a wheel usually doubles as). It's very irritating to lose my middle-click open new tab function. If I had realised you couldn't use the touch pad as a button, I wouldn't have bought it.

Cute mouse, but it lacks tactile feedback

[TheRealElbadoo]

I bought one of these because of its extemely compact usb receiver. My older laptop's USB plug is recessed in the case so that most other wireless receivers would require an extension cable.

This one's small enough that it plugs right in. I'm half-tempted to try and see if I can fit it inside the laptop's case. (BTW, why don't laptop makers include wireless mouse capability? OK, so Bluetooth might count, if there are any good Bluetooth mice...)

Unfortunately, the mouse suffers from a lack of tactile feedback. It has a slightly audible "tick" when you're scrolling, but I really miss the physical "bump" of a real scroll wheel. Perhaps they could accomplish the same thing by adding some little ridges on the scroll surface?

A little center dimple, like you find on calculator and phone "5" keys would also help in positioning your scrolling finger.

It could also use a third button. Two just ain't enough!

This is good enough for a compact laptop mouse, but I'd wait until they refine it some for desktop use.

Re:User preference differ

[TobyWong]

I bought a Panasonic toughbook W2 and I've absolutely fallen in love with the touchpad.

It differs from your average touchpad in that it's a circle and you can scroll by rotating your finger around the outer edge (think of an ipod volume control mechanism). Since it's a circle you can scroll endlessly without having to lift and reseat your finger like you would have to with other touchpads or with a mouse wheel.

I wouldn't use it for gaming by for scrolling through documents, webpages, etc its fantastic.

Re:small nit to pick

[bhtooefr]

How funny ;-)

First, there's the mouse.
Then, there's the trackball, which is put into laptops.
Then, somebody at IBM realizes that the trackball is too big, and puts in the TrackPoint (pointing stick).
Next, somebody else also figures out that the trackball is too big. They use a touchpad.
Microsoft (this is debatable, though) puts a sort of one-axis trackball in their mice for scrolling.
IBM sees it, and puts a TrackPoint in the top of their mice for two-axis scrolling.
Then, Kensington and Logitech decide to put a sort of touchpad in the tops of their mice for one or two-axis scrolling ;-)

So, every major pointing device after the mouse (except for the touchscreen) has been strapped onto the top of a mouse for scroll functionality ;-)

Whatever happened to BlueTooth?

[Minstrel Boy]

I don't understand why the majority of wireless mice/keyboards out there use RF rather than BlueTooth. It's a reasonable standard, it's been out there for awhile, lots of notebooks come with built-in BlueTooth - I expected to see all the newer wireless mice start to use it over the past couple of years. Is it licensing fees? Power consumption? Implementation problems?

KeS

MX900

[Brian Stretch]

Logitech's MX900 [newegg.com] mouse uses Bluetooth, but yeah, why they don't use it more often is beyond me too. Must be a cost issue of some sort. FWIW, I use a Microsoft Bluetooth mouse with my notebook. Logitech's mouse is supposed to be a bit nicer. Shame HP only provides Bluetooth radios with their Configure-To-Order notebooks and not with the gazillions they sell at retail. I always encourage people to add the Bluetooth option when helping them buy notebooks.

Re:2.4 GHz

[sammy baby]

I was thinking exactly the same thing. I just snagged a new laptop with built-in Bluetooth, and it's shocking exactly how few bluetooth travel mice there are out there.

If you're going to include a dongle in the packaging anyway, why not make it a bluetooth one? The mouse I eventually bought came bundled with one, and I just tossed it. (Okay, actually, I just put it aside.)

I could see the need for a 2.4Ghz transmitter if this were a presentation remote or something similar, but come on, people. Most of us don't sit fifty feet from our laptops.

Iffy ergonomics....

[Half-pint HAL]

As someone with a personal and professional interest in ergonomics, I'm not too happy about this.

First up, scroll wheels are a Bad Thing to start off with as they encourage unnatural movements of the middle finger while holding the rest of the fingers static.

Secondly, things like zero-travel buttons and trackpads all too often prove far too sensitive -- any small twitch is interpreted as a meaningful movement. The result is that the user tenses up to avoid making any inadvertant movements.

As all computer-people should know: tension is the root cause of many an RSI.

HAL

Left unsaid...

[Embedded Geek]

the era of scroll wheels is short-lived if Logitech applies the same design to its desktop equivalent products...

...and they drop the price by an order of magnitude.

It will be interesting to see if they can get the manufacturing costs down to $1-3 to adapt into a mouse. A quick check [google.com] shows most touchpad mouse alternatives bottoming at about $30. How much of that is on the retail end (market demand & cost of stocking less popular goods) and the manufacturing end (dedicated USB stuff, case - stuff that goes away when integrated into a mouse) is anyone's guess.

An engineering challenge, to bring the concept of a touchpad onto a mouse for a low cost, but with the right price pressures (especially from competition) I wouldn't mind dropping an extra buck or three on this. Not too much more than that, though.

Re:Tactile feedback

[SatanicPuppy]

I don't know how many people use this function, but it's pretty common these days on MS boxes. If you click the scroll-wheel button, it changes your cursor to a little up/down (and right left on some applications) cursor link that lets you scroll by moving your mouse up and down. Think I saw it first on office, years ago.

The thing is, I HATE it. There is a fine line between scrolling a little faster and SCREAMING down to the bottom of the page. It's seriously annoying.

So, my question is, how does this touchpad deal with the speed question? I'd like to have more control than is currently possible with the wheel, but I don't want to have it spastically jumping around the screen when I brush it.

Re:2.4 GHz

[Noke]

I wouldn't say that Bluetooth coesists fine with WiFi (a or g - 2.4GHz). I use a bluetooth mouse with my 802.11g laptop and have very sluggish response from my bluetooth mouse whenever I do heavy data transfers to/from my laptop over the WiFI network.

Re:2.4 GHz

[LetterJ]

I've found the same. Between bluetooth, wifi, microwaves, cordless phones, audio-video senders, these non-bluetooth wireless peripherals, etc. I just don't see how a "wireless future" is any more likely (near term) than the "paperless office". That's not even talking about the shared nature of the wifi itself. Ever transfer a DVD ISO file between to 802.11g laptops? That 54Mbps plummets REALLY fast into unusability.

There's just too much going on and we haven't really hit complete widespread adoption yet for most of these technologies.

I had a blog posting about this very thing a couple of days ago.

http://www.wynia.org/wordpress/?p=100/ [wynia.org]

Re:2.4 GHz

[mxms751]

I used to work with FoxPro 2.6 and had the exact same expeience with increased speed while 'wiggling' the mouse. No one ever believed me that it was a fact. Glad to know someone else in the world's been there.