Say Hello to My Little Friend

Logitech’s VX Revolution mobile mouse could be the perfect companion to your notebook. It’s wireless. It’s small. And it packs a punch.

When we think of mice, most of us think of Logitech. Sure, there are other great companies out there who make good mice and pointing devices, but Logitech is definitely one of the most popular brands for mice on the market.

I remember the infant days of portable pointing devices for notebooks (I’m talking about the early 1990s here). While some were so bulky it made you wonder if the designers ever used a notebook, other devices were so depressingly small that you’d have to be a leprechaun to operate it.

Thanks to advances in wireless and optical technology, Logitech now offers an excellent mobile mouse which offers all the features of a full-sized cousin and some features you may not have seen before.

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The Logitech VX Revolution is a fairly small mouse  compared to the similarly looking Logitech G5 corded mouse. Measuring roughly 4.25″ in length, 2.5″ wide, and 1.75″ thick, the VX Revolution is small enough to put into the smaller pockets in your luggage or notebook bag while travelling. Compare this size to the Logitech G5 which is 5″ in length, 2.5″ wide, and 2″ thick.

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Perhaps the best feature of the VX Revolution is that the small radio receiver slips into a small slot in the mouse itself. This may sound like a trivial gimmick, but for a traveller it keeps the transmitter in a known spot so it doesn’t get lost. Also, it makes packing a lot easier since you don’t have to find space for seperate items. I generally just find it useful to have this little pocket on the mouse… it’s hard to explain, but it does make moving it around a lot easier.

On the bottom of the VX Revolution is a small switch called “MicroGear” which switches the scroll wheel from click-to-click wheel mode, to a free-spinning smooth scroll. This little switch is really interesting as it gives the VX Revolution the advantage of precise tactile clicked scrolling (which I like for playing games), or the rapid smooth scrolling which is great for panning through documents, webpages, or any window with a vertical scroll.

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I wish the MicroGear switch were on the top of the mouse since I can see how a user would want to switch between the different modes more quickly and easily — flipping over the mouse to switch modes could become a nuisance.

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Just below the scroll wheel is the One-Touch Search button which is an incredible little button. By highlighting some text in a document, hitting this button would execute a search in Google or Yahoo. If you don’t have text selected, hitting the One-Touch Search button would launch your browser and open it to either Google or Yahoo (depending on which you selected in the Logitech SetPoint software.

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The VX Revolution also has a Zoom control switch which controls magnification of an image being displayed, or enlarges/decreases the size of the text displayed in the window (webpage, text document etc.). This is pretty handy during presentations when small text is hard to read on an projector or on a shared screen with peers.

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Finally, there are forward and back buttons, and a battery power gauge.

Next Page – Software and Battery

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