Jan
29
2004Logitech MX900 Bluetooth Mouse
29
2004
Having recently gotten a 12″ PowerBook with built-in Bluetooth, I was anxious to try out Apple’s Bluetooth mouse, and experience wire- and dongle-free mousing. It was quite nice except, after a while, as a “power-user”, I sorely missed the scroll-wheel and right mouse button. Well, I put the Apple Mouse on eBay (go ahead, bid if you want it!) while I tried to figure out Plan B. Should I bite the bullet and go back to wired mousing? After all, no one else is making a Bluetooth mouse for the Mac.
Well, yes and no. It turns out that Logitech makes a Bluetooth mouse called the MX900. It’s not cheap, but boy is it a swell mouse. It’s got a scroll wheel, a total of EIGHT buttons (including clicking the scroll wheel), it has a charging stand that doubles as a Bluetooth hub, and it’s got a good feel to it. Only problem is, if you search high and low on Logitech’s web site, it makes no mention of this mouse working with Macs.
Except, well, it DOES.
I just started using it with the PowerBook, and it’s fantastic. Out of the box, I just had to use the regular Bluetooth Setup Assistant, and I was up and running. Without installing any drivers (because Logitech doesn’t make any), the right-click button worked, the scroll wheel worked, the “up” and “down” buttons work (though I think these are kind of silly, since all they do is simulate moving the scroll wheel one click at a time). The buttons which are clearly intended for “back” and “forward” actions on the web browser do nothing, and one final button (which I think is intended for app-switching) does nothing either.
All in all, still a drastic improvement over Apple’s no-button, no-frills mouse.
Now, about those “useless” buttons, here’s the interesting part. If you go into your “Exposé” settings, you will find that you can assign any of these buttons to Exposé actions without any trouble. Clearly, Panther has the ability to recognize all these buttons, but sadly, no other part of the OS exposes this capability. Hopefully this will change in the future. But, meanwhile, it’s really great having Exposé functionality right on my mouse (where it clearly belongs).
As for the included Bluetooth hub, I don’t really know if it will work on the Mac, but it’s kind of pointless to try anyway. I’ll be using it with my PC. Obviously, it will still function as a charger for the mouse (which conveniently uses AA-sized rechargable batteries so, in a pinch, you can just yank out the rechargables and put in normal ones).
All in all, I’m digging the mouse, and Logitech is stupid. I’m sure I’m not the only person out there who loves the convenience of Bluetooth, but needs more functionality than Apple’s Wireless Mouse offers. They could have a monopoly on Bluetooth “power-mice” for OS X, but they’re squandering it for some reason (for crying out loud, it ALREADY WORKS, they wouldn’t have to do a THING). A conspiracy theorist might wonder if Microsoft is paying them off to pretend they don’t work with OS X, or is Apple paying them off to avoid cutting into Apple Wireless Mouse sales? Hmmm…
Well, if you want one, it seems to go for about $100 in most places, but I found it for $79.99 at LiveWarehouse.com. Oddly, I could only find it via Yahoo Shopping. Otherwise I couldn’t find it on their site - Enjoy!