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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!
My favorite mouse is also my current mouse, a Logitech Optical Wheel mouse
Any real geek could have a Dual Optical Mouse. Also available at Thinkgeek. That is definately my favorite mouse.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
For the PowerBook G4: Logitech MX500.
For the PowerMac G4: Logitech MX700.
I bought the 500 first, loved it so much, that I had to pick up a 700 for home. Now I await:
- A bluetooth 15" Powerbook
- A bluetooth Logitech MXx00 mouse
- Income to pay for it.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
Hardly any software even supported it, but hey, those that did were 1337. Beagle Graphics and MousePaint. I still have them, and I still use them (with EMU][).
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
The crosshairs were on a puck. Connected to a digitiser pad, not a mouse. mice have balls, digipads dont.
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.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
Doug also invented the GUI and Smalltalk (www.squeak.org). Most of you are familiar with the GUI, but you really should give Squeak a look. It's a pretty cool development enviornment.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
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.
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I dunno about you guys but it makes me nothing but upset when Logitech goes out of their way to fill the world with mice. You should see my garden, half eaten roots and stems. 500 Million. 500 MILLION. Corporations now days thing they can just walk all over us.
I remember the good ole days before the mice took over. Never again.
$5 says that the first one is probably still functional...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
It's one of the first mice produced by Engelbart. Powered by coal, and made almost entirely of cast iron and oak, it weighs nearly 1400 pounds. A true marvel of engineering for its day!
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
My favourite mouse all categories is the Atari ST mouse. The distinct click and stylish design was very hot when the standard seriel mouse looked like...a bar of dirty soap.
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night.
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.
Hosting: as low as $5.95/Mo
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 :)
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..
I swear, Microsoft mice and keyboards are the exact opposite of their OS and Office software; cheap, tough, worthwhile and available without too much fluff. I'd rank MS hardware up to Logitech's level of quality. Too bad I can't say the same for their software department...
Hate me!
I'm not sure how many people have tried this, but you really should put your mouse on the left, that's where it belongs.
The number pad on the right of most keyboards puts the mouse to far over to be realy comfortable.
Plus, for you FPS fans, it's very handy to have your right hand on the number pad and the left on the mouse. If you re-map the keys you never have to move to any other section of the keyboard.
I allways laughed at those special keypads for playing games... you've alread got one, just move your mouse over 18 inches.
(for full discloser I am left handed, but it was a righty that showed me the light)
"Failure is not an option, it's part of the standard package"
Well, one of the first mice I ever used was one of those screwy Pen-Mice. It was an attempt to make the mouse similar to a known technology, a pen; but it failed miserably. You had to hold it just so, the buttons were annoying to work with, and the cord (which came out the top) was forever in the way. It was an interesting concept, but just wasn't right.
My current "mouse" is a Logitech Marble FX trackball. It has got to be the most comfortable pointing device I have ever used, and I like the ability to simply pull my fingers away, and the cursor doesn't move, even when I click the buttons. I could never get that from a mouse, clicking always caused me to move a bit this way or that.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
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.
The old square one, with the front two thirds sloped down. I used those almost exclusively from '88 till I could afford a big, honking Kensington trackball. (yes, that's actually a billiard ball in those things.) Best tracking mouse I've ever used, although I wouldn't trade the wheel and seven buttons of my Logitech MX-500 for anything. Well, I'd trade 'em for $100, 'cause I can get another one for less than that. But you get the point.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
I always thought Xerox PARC, that place that made money for everybody except Xerox, invented the mouse. Is that just common misconception?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
...in a box in the back room where we keep the unused equipment.
And somehow they have violated entropy and managed to tie the cables of *all* of them together, on their own.
Link to my not-quite-ready-yet site - maybe 7 days premature but whatever, it's been a long day at the office.
Cheers.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
Oh how I love thee, modern "three button" mouse. Let me count the ways. One. Twone... twroolllll... twslip-er -roll-er... twthree... dangit!!!! Three. -Unnamed poet of the twenty-first century ____________________________________________ Fight for the survival of REAL thee-button mice!!!
Last week, Microsoft Corp. announced a computer mouse with horizontal scrolling capabilities and even a mouse outfitted in leather.
I know "why" isn't a great question to ask on slashdot but now I really mean it. I think horizontal scrolling would be VERY nice, especially when looking at a large picture and you don't feel like moving to the bottom and scrolling, and you can't use the arrow keys to move because you only have one han... ok I'll stop right their.
Anyway, why fit a mouse with leather? Your hand gets very warm and sweaty from playing games and sometimes just doing regular work on the computer so why would you want a leather covered mouse? I'm sure it'll be a lot of fun having your hand stick to your mouse when it's too hot. And wouldn't the sweat really wear down the leather and like ruin it? Won't whatever dye they use bleed onto your hand? I dunno it just doesn't seem like a good idea.
amazing what google can pull up. here's a website about Engelbart's demo of the first mouse
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
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.
Mine was the mouse that came with the Amstrad 1512 , europes first really affordable mouse orientated PC clone. Ah, running GEM off a single 360K FD (no HD).. And that nice clunky mouse cursor when you ran the QBASIC 2.0 compiler..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Try pixelusa.com
Only $8.00 and they have lots in stock.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Movement is ver precise, even when they are very dirty it is easy to move the pointer where you want it on the screen. It uses a laser to track the movement of dots on the surface of the ball instead of any physical motion device. I bought my first one for $99 about 5 years ago and it is still going strong. The only problem I have is that they are hard to find in stock. But the logitech store currently has them for $29.
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DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
If you would have had a nice old MacWorld subscription, on the March 2003 issue, on the back was a great add for the kensington studiomouse, which is wireless, and has a cradle
Studio Mouse
Beautiful mouse, but, there, question answered, and mice evolution goes on.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
at no extra cost, even...
You know, you CAN use it on a mousepad.. it keeps it cleaner, and moves smoother, depending.
Really. It works. I've seen it.
My best investment mouse-wise was the cordless optical mouse I'm now using. No more cleaning, no more cable getting stuck somewhere.
I think its time Logitech brought out a decent wireless mouse that uses Bluetooth and does not require its own branded USB-to-Bluetooth adapter like the Microsoft products. And while we're at it, a Bluetooth based wireless keyboard that matches the Microsoft Elite series, again without requiring the use of their own branded adapter.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Cut a fitting piece of duct tape (or transparent plastic tape, found in any office on the northern hemisphere). Put it under the mouse, on the feet, with one stripe covering two feet (x-axis), one above, one below the center and there you go ready for high speed mousing with full accuracy.
And here's the catch: if it accumulates junk from the desk and loses that comfortable feel, add another layer of tape or replace the original tape. You can easily stack more than a dozen layers without a notable difference in mouse feeling. That way you always have a perfectly sliding mouse.
Hardcore gamers go even further: they use the tape and silicone or PTFE-spray (teflon) in small doses - works WONDERS, I tell you...
Actually, MousePaint was a port of LisaPaint.
//c as well, in 1985 or 1986 I think, and I also happen to own a used Apple Lisa 2/10.)
Look at the title bar of the window, and the items in the menu bar, and then look at some screen shots of the Apple Lisa.
The giveaways: The File menu is called "File/Print" and the stripes in the window title bar are vertical, not horizontal as on the Mac.
(My first mouse was for my Apple
I had the privilege, along with many others, of getting a personal demonstration of the mouse from Doug Engelbart when I was at Stanford in the 1960s. In addition to the mouse he demonstrated a device that has not yet become popular: the chord-board. As I recall it was six levers, one for each finger plus two for the thumb, so you could operate it with either your right or your left hand. By pressing the levers in various combinations he could enter data into the computer. The only similar device I have seen since is the keyboard used by court reporters.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
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.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I'm a big fan of the Fingerworks products. It's a little weird to type on, but the mousing and gesturing is wonderful. And it supports Linux, even to the point of having a set of desktop-switch gestures and Emacs shortcut gestures. The customization software runs under Linux, too.
I agree completely. I was using a Kensington ADB 4-button mouse on my G3 Mac for ProTools when one of the buttons decided to die, and I had heard good things about the Logitech Dual Optical, so I picked one up and I couldn't be happier. The two things I dislike about most optical mice are 1) the (lack of) mass and 2) the width. Kensington and Microsoft optical mice are a little too wide and flat for my preferences; I like how Logitech mice are shaped a little higher.
The best thing about the Logitech Dual Optical, though, is how massive (heavy) it is compared to most other optical mice. The components of optical mice are, by their very nature, lighter than the traditional ball mice, and from years of shoving around heavier mice, I can't handle those flimsy plastic things. The Dual Optical has some meat on its bones, and it tracks more smoothly than any other optical I've used. Great mouse!
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
"Our mouse has only one button, so there's no confusion which button you have to press!" ???
Ah, the good old days... [snort]
j
One of my former colleagues, when we were visiting Doug one day, had the bright idea of having him autograph his mouse.
Doug duly autographed it - and mentioned that this was the first time anybody had asked him. (This was in the late '80s or early '90s, so it wasn't like nobody had had the opportunity.)
So at that point he had the only Engelbart-autographed mouse. (And even if somebody else has asked since - which the rest of us didn't to avoid me-too ism and maintain the value of HIS mouse - he still has the first.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Argue all you want, the apple puck mouse was still an abomination.