In November 2009, my USB Logitech Optical MouseMan died a cruel death. I had been using this particular trackball for a number of years. In fact, I liked it so much that I bought two more, one for the desk at home and one for use on the road with the laptop.
As I contemplated going out to OfficeMax to buy yet another one, I realized that it might be time to upgrade, at least a little bit. While I was very fond of the existing device, there were a few features that I was lacking that had been added to the newer models over the years:
- cordless operation to make desk arrangement less cumbersome
- scroll wheel
- extra buttons for things like forward and back in a browser
- third button for use in X11
After realizing that I needed an upgrade I decided to dig into some research on the possibilities. Now I must confess that I am a completely unrepentant trackball user. I had been using trackballs for my computers for at least the last 20 years. I did occasionally use a mouse, because sometimes they are better tools, but for the most part I used trackballs exclusively. One of my favorites over the years has been the original Kensington Turbo Mouse. It had a great big trackball and four large, easy to hit, buttons. One of the great things about this particular trackball was the fact that you could swap out the trackball with a standard billiard ball and it would fit perfectly.
After some research I decided to go with the cordless version of the same trackball that I was replacing. I purchased the Logitech Cordless Optical Trackman at Fry’s in Atlanta.
Initial Impressions
One of the first things that I noticed about the new trackball was that it was tremendously stiff. I didn’t remember this being the case with my older models. The cursor movement was also very jerky. Over the first day of use, however, the movement and tracking of the ball improved. My guess is that part of the stiffness was caused by some sort of film that was on the ball from the manufacturing process. One user in a forum posted that his was vastly improved by cleaning the entire ball with rubbing alcohol. Not having any of this on hand, I hoped that the film would gradually be removed with use. Thankfully this was the case.
Usage
I did notice a “learning curve” when it came to getting used to the style of the design and placement of the trackball. The ball is placed off-center on the right-hand side of the casing. I was used to having my hand completely flat in orientation with respect to the wrist rest and the trackball from the older models. After some use I found the new orientation to feel more natural.
As with many users, I have found that you will need to spend some time tweaking the Logitech multiplier and tracking speeds in the Logitech control panel as well as the OS X mouse preference pane. It took me sometime to get the settings just so. This was not really the case with the USB model, however with the older model you didn’t have a multiplier available in the Logitech software package. After quite a bit of back and forth with the settings, I finally got it to a useable setting.
Software
The Logitech software gives you the expected settings for the various buttons, scrolling speed as well as the multiplier to apply to the tracking and cursor movement. Interestingly enough, the software installer can’t figure out that you don’t have a Logitech keyboard installed, just pick one and move on. Due to the three kexts (kernel extensions) that are installed, the software requires you to restart, even though you can dynamically load a kext without rebooting.
In my particular installation, the registration application that starts after installation never completely loaded.
I did find some interesting points while tweaking the software settings:
- The scroll speed in the Logitech panel doesn’t appear to actually have an effect on the speed of the scroll wheel. This will need to be controlled in the standard OS mouse preference pane.
- The tracking multiplier can have a huge effect on the jerkiness of the cursor. My best results were achieved when leaving the multiplier set on 1 and controlling the tracking speed with the standard OS mouse pane.
- The battery life indicator in the Logitech panel is nice, however it would be great if there was a menubar indicator or a LED indicator on the device itself.
Overall, I am quite pleased with the new trackball. In fact, I have become so used to having the extra buttons and the scroll wheel that I find myself trying to use them when I am at home with my older, USB model. Looks like I need to add another item to my shopping list.
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