Logitech Ships 500 Millionth Mouse

ipxodi writes "Logitech marks the milestone of 500 million shipped mice. Mice first widely appeared in consumer form on the original Macintosh, but have appeared in various forms back through time to 1964 when they were invented by Doug Englebart. My favorite mouse is also my current mouse, a Logitech Optical Wheel mouse. I also remember some oddities beyond the old bar-of-soap shaped mice of the mid 80's, like one with a crosshair attachment for clicking on specific points of a blueprintfor CAD input. What's your favorite current or past mouse?" My first mouse was back in 1987, for my Apple //c. It cost $50, and came with a double-sided floppy that contained an interactive instructional program on side one, and MousePaint (a port of MacPaint) on side two. Memories!

Comments

Logitech Marble Mouse

[codefool]

Got hooked on these when I got into FPS gaming. But since I travel(ed) alot, it turned out to be way cool on airplanes. Small footprint, and doesn't require any 'room' to move around. Just sits in place with my hand on it, and the pointer goes where I want. Saves the arm too.

Re:Logitech Marble Mouse

[Vargasan]

I have an old Trackman Marble and two Cordless Optical Marbles.
Best "mouse" I've ever owned. Who needs mousepads?!

Not a mouse per se

[BWJones]

What's your favorite current or past mouse?"

My favorite input device is my Kensington Turbo Mouse. It's a trackball, but I have been using them for years going back to the original 1.0. They are great in reducing RSI and allow precise control which is important for digital imagery work and image forensics.

Logitech TrackMan Marble Wheel

[kworthington]

My favorite is actually a trackball. No un-necessary wrist movement avoids carpal-tunnel nicely. My preference is the Logitech TrackMan Marble Wheel, which has a scroll button as a third button. It's sort of the older version of this. Mine is a bit 'wider' left to right, and is white rather than silver/gray.

Best... Mouse... Ever...

[Chmarr]

The clearly the best mouse ever was the hemispherical, red-clown-nose mouse that came with the AT&T/Teletype 5620 terminal. What a buzz using that thing was :)

I don't use a mouse, you insensitive clod!

[rhetland]

Oh, wait, this isn't a poll.

But the truth is that I don't use a mouse anymore. I use a touchstream keyboard from Fingerworks that lets me move the arrow and cursor and type on the same interface. This is very nice.

Anyone who has even a bit of RSI can identify with my hatred, or at least ambivilance toward mice. My tendons ache at the thought of so many mice in the world..

Re:I have the Logitech optical too

[pla]

I somehow don't think the mouse will be replaced anytime soon.

Probably not, but I'd like to see them vanish.

For delicate work, such as purely digital drawing, mice force the user to use the whole wrist and arm, rather than far more dextrous fingers. For coarse work like web browsing, mice far exceed the precision needed.

I'd like a wireless optical thimble, myself - A sort of finger-cap that tracks the surface you place it on, and you can tap your finger to click. Far better for art, and far lighter and less encumbering for "normal" work. Alas, I don't think such a devce exists. :-(

Old-school optical mice

[Experiment 626]

I really liked the optical mice about 12 years ago that were put out by Mouse Systems, and the ones on the Sun workstations at the time. Sure, optical is mainstream stuff now, but these cutting edge mice were so ahead of their time... how many people had an optical mouse on their 386?

Unlike the modern opticals, however, the early ones didn't let you use any old surface as a mouse pad. They came with special metal mouse pads with a tiny grid of shiny and not-as-shiny areas for the mouse to track. Get the pad too scratched or dented and your mouse started working funny. I liked the pads though, having your mouse on a futuristic metal surface instead of the usual felt-covered rubber was all part of the charm.

Heavily modded Logitech.

[SharpFang]

Classic logitech mouse with wheel... But with mods.

Inertia wheel. I removed the clickety-click mechanism of the wheel, and ordered a metal replacement for the rubber band - a pretty heavy iron ring. Now with a single strong push I may scroll 20-30 pages (while seeing them all as they scroll by!) and stop by putting my finger against the spinning wheel when I see the section I've been looking for. Causes some problems in games (like unwanted weapons switching) but is absolutely superb when it comes to websurfing and all no-game work. BTW, assign "fire" to "mouse up" and you get instant autofire ;)

Thumb RMB. Since the inertia wheel is slightly bigger than the original one, I can't use it as middle mouse button. All the better, I've placed one in the side of the mouse, under my thumb. It's VERY comfortable. Far more than the wheel was. No moving fingers from button to button, just press with thumb and get things pasted :)

And prettifiers... Some plastic that is used in "emergency route" labels and shines in the darkness, around the wheel, to mask the hole edges and an op amp tapped into data lines and powered from the power lines with output to a LED placed under the thumb button, blinking on any mouse activity.