Buying a new mouse is kind of like buying a new toothbrush: You don’t realize you needed a new one until you actually make the switch and realize how bad the old one really was.
Mouse technology has improved a lot during recent years. The old rolling ball is being replaced with optical sensors that eliminate the need for mouse pads. Cords are giving way to wireless connections. Extra buttons and controls perform added functions, and the plain old mouse is being challenged by stylish designs.
This week my assistant Katie Boehret and I tested five new mice from Logitech, Microsoft and a small company called MacMice.
We started with the most basic of the models, Microsoft’s $15 Optical Mouse by S+arck (the designer, Philippe Starck). Underneath its shell, it’s nothing more than a basic, corded optical mouse.
Because both sides of the mouse are the same shape, unlike some mice that are shaped to fit into a hand, the S+arck mouse works well for lefties as well as right-handed users.
Logitech has come out with a trio of new mice that, while stylish, are really focused on features and functionality. The first Logitech mouse that we tested was also the most expensive. The $80 MX1000 Laser Cordless Mouse has plenty of bells and whistles. The most innovative thing about the MX1000 mouse is that it uses a laser, rather than a standard optical sensor.
We tested the MX1000 on metal, plastic and laminated paper, and it worked on all three. The Microsoft optical mouse didn’t work on any of these surfaces.
The MX1000 also has various buttons, in addition to the regular left, right and scroll-wheel buttons. The scroll wheel spins you up or down through a document, but can also tilt left and right to scroll horizontally for viewing pictures or documents. There are also forward and back thumb buttons for skipping ahead or back through Web pages. When pressed, an application switch on the left of the mouse brings up a tiny list of your opened applications.
The laser mouse comes with a small stand, which plugs into a USB port and wall socket. The stand operates both as the mouse’s cordless base station and its recharging port, because the mouse runs on a rechargeable lithium battery. A fully charged battery supposedly lasts for three weeks, but if you forget to charge the mouse in the stand, you could run out of juice.
We also tested Logitech’s new $50 MediaPlay Cordless Mouse, a traditional optical mouse that uses replaceable batteries and a receiver that’s just a small plastic wand that plugs directly into a USB port. This is a sleek, curved mouse trimmed in a blue or red rubber strip. Like the laser mouse, this one has side-to-side scrolling, and special buttons for moving back and forth among Web pages.
But the key to this model is that it is able to launch your favorite media player application, such as iTunes or Musicmatch, and control volume and playback. Without ever moving your hand to the keyboard, or moving the cursor to reach a menu or toolbar, you can pause and play songs and videos, or skip ahead or back among songs or video clips, even when your media software isn’t visible on the screen. If you use this mouse with a Mac, you get the basic functions, but not the media playback and Web page features, which are enabled by software that’s available only for Windows.
Since I listen to music a lot while I work, I love the MediaPlay mouse. I have been using it for weeks on both my home and office PCs, with great results. Battery life also seems excellent.
I’ve also come to really like the third Logitech mouse we tested, the $70 V500 Cordless Notebook Mouse. This light blue and silver wireless optical mouse is designed to be used with a laptop on the road, though it can be used with any modern computer. It’s small enough and rugged enough to just toss in a briefcase. Yet, unlike some travel mice, it’s high enough and wide enough to be really comfortable. The mouse collapses into a thinner shape for travel, and expands to normal size when you want to use it.
Finally, we tested a new cordless optical mouse from a small company called MacMice that’s designed for the Macintosh, though it also works on Windows. In fact, it seems specifically designed for the stylish new iMac G5. It’s called the Mouse BT, and can be bought for $70 at macmice.com.
Apple’s standard cordless optical mouse is gorgeous – white, with a clear plastic covering. It needs no base station because it uses the internal Bluetooth module that is either built in, or is offered as an inexpensive option, on most Macs. But the Apple mice suffer from an ancient, deficient design: they have only one button and no scroll wheel. So, many Mac owners seek alternatives.
In my tests, the Mouse BT worked fine, once I linked it wirelessly to my Mac using Apple’s Bluetooth setup software. But it sometimes took a little longer than Apple’s mouse did to start working after the computer awoke from sleep mode, and I found that its scrolling action wasn’t as smooth as on the Logitech mice.
You may be happy with the mouse that came with your PC. But there are better alternatives out there.
Walter Mossberg writes about personal technology for The Wall Street Journal.
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