Tailless Mice on Glass

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I needed a new travel mouse a couple weeks back, to fill in for those times when my favorite TrackPoint isn’t quite the right tool, and to save a bit of wear-and-tear on my right index finger.

Now, I’m picky when it comes to input peripherals (on the desktop, only the Microsoft Natural 4000 will do; on the road, only a good ThinkPad keyboard gets me to even consider a laptop, etc.), so it was not an easy choice.

Logitech Anywhere Mouse MXI’ve normally gone with Microsoft mice in the past, but this time, I went back to Logitech. Partly because they had one that felt like the best compromise between size and ergonomics. But more than a little bit because of a feature Logitech calls Darkfield, which allows these optical mice to work without a mousepad on darn near any surface, even including glass.

The only caveat is that the glass must be at least 4 mm thick—I’m not sure that’s a real limitation because I wouldn’t want to put any computer on glass any thinner. 😉

This little rodent lives up to the Darkfield claims perfectly. I haven’t yet tried a surface it didn’t work on, and when I pulled it out in a meeting last week and set it down on the glass table, being able to amaze another geek when he said, “Uh, you’re going to need a mousepad for that.” was priceless.

I haven’t dived into its features enough for a proper review yet, but this Anywhere Mouse MX works so flawlessly and is such a joy to use, that I feel obligated to give kudos to Logitech.

Author: Peter Sheerin

Peter Sheerin is best known for the decade he spent as the Technical Editor of CADENCE magazine, where he was the acknowledged expert in Computer-Aided Design hardware and software. He has a long-standing passion for improving usability of software, hardware, and everyday objects that is always interwoven in his articles. Peter is available for freelance technical writing and product reviews, and is exploring career opportunities in interaction design. His pet personal project is exploring the best ways to harmonize visual, tactile, and audible symbols for improving the effectiveness of alerting systems.

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