In need of a cordless tablet mouse we went to the store….
The up-close-and-personal feeling of the tablet, being right in there with our hands on the content like with books and pen and paper, is a great feeling. But sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes we want to sit back and take a relaxed and distant view of the screen. So it’s time to supplement the tablet with a mouse.
In this way, we found ourselves in need of a wireless tablet mouse for the road or at our favourite Halifax hangout Steve-O-Reno’s, when we don’t have easy access to our docking stations. While we like our pen and the keyboard trackpoint / nub, having a nifty mouse can be quite convenient. We tried throwing a regular-sized el cheap-o Logitech mouse in the bag, but the scroll-wheel always got damaged in a matter of weeks.
Off we went to the office supply store in downtown Halifax where we perused the various mice options. Our eyes pretty much fixated on the Logitech V500 Cordless Notebook Mouse. And it wasn’t just the pricing error on the shelf that attracted us (long, frustrating story).
The V500 is a bit different in that it has no visible wheel yet it has all common wheel features housed in something that Logitech calls the 4-way solid state scroll panel. You slide your finger accross the panel and voila. You can control the speed by your touch. It takes a little getting used to but it feels fine and does the job either vertically or horizontally. It also has right and left clicking. It’s small but not too small.
It requires 2 AAA batteries and the mouse has been working well for the past week. One of the neat characteristics of this mouse is that the USB receiver fits neatly in the body of the mouse and closes securely. So when you’re done having your latte at Steve-O-Reno’s, take the USB receiver out of your tablet’s USB port, put it in the mouse body, then put the mouse in the included small protective pouch. This is a great solution to not loosing the USB receiver (too often!).
Logitech claims that this is an "all-terrain" mouse (no kidding!). For car and SUV-less people like us this is pretty exciting. Of course we had to take it for a few road tests. On the bike. On the grass. On the cat.
Despite the so-so roadtest results (on the back of the bike, on the cat, on the grass and on the knee), we really like this mouse. It’s a nice change from always working with the pen or the keyboard trackpoint. And with this mouse it gives you even more of an incentive to be away from your sunless office with its docking station. After all, the hybrid PC Tablet model is supposed to be all about choice. And we’re adding this rodent to the Tablet-pantry.
Update: We liked this mouse so much that we had to get another one.
