logitech mx revolution?

[djones]

anyone use the mx revolution from logitech? I tried it once at the store and it felt very natural in my hand. my only concerns are A) how long do the batteries last, B) do the special buttons work on linux, and C) does it have "hardware mouse acceleration"?

By "hardware mouse acceleration", I mean whether or not the mouse allows for one-to-one correspondence of pointer move with mouse movement... for example, on the mouse that came with my dell, moving the mouse 3 inches moves the cursor exactly the same amount, no matter how fast I move it. but with my logitech gaming mouse, the faster I move the mouse the further the pointer moves, thus it is "hardware mouse accelerated". unfortunately I hate mouse acceleration so I'm using my dell mouse right now.

[Waves77]

anyone use the mx revolution from logitech? I tried it once at the store and it felt very natural in my hand. my only concerns are A) how long do the batteries last, B) do the special buttons work on linux, and C) does it have "hardware mouse acceleration"?

Not the mx revolution, but the mx620 (and a vx nano).

A) Battery life seems to be excellent (and there's an 'off' switch as well). I haven't owned it long enough to see if it lives up to the one year promise, but reviews seem to be pretty good. So long I've owned it for about 3 months without problems.

B) Not out of the box - to be honest I don't really have a need for them, but you can configure them under Linux using a program called btnx - if it's not in your distro's repository, homepage is here: http://www.ollisalonen.com/btnx/

C) HELL no

[xsphat]

I didn't even know about that hardware acceleration thing. That sucks.

I don't think my Razer Copperhead has that (in Mac).

[Eclairz]

I hate accelerated mice, its harder to be more accurate with them as their speed is variable. It much better to get a fast razer or logitech and get used to the speed so you don't lose any accuracy. I guess its possible to get really good with accelerated mice but you would have to use mice in a non linear fashion which is very difficult to learn, e.g. with non accelerated
small move = small movement
medium move = medium movement
large move = large movement

accelerated
small move = tiny movement
medium move = medium movement
large move = massive movement

I'm sure with good adjustment you could get used to accelerated, or if you have a slow mouse and a big screen acceleration is often necessary to get over the screen quickly without making massive mouse movements

I think razer developed a special white version together with software for mac called the "Pro"?

but i find the most important things about mouse are response via increased response polling rate razers often be set up to 1000 per min i think, and increased sensor sensitivity, i find 1600dpi to be about perfect for the resolution i use which is 1680x1080, but your mileage will vary depending on resolution of screen and what you feel you can control mentally (remember in terms of input the human is the restricting element)

[djones]

Thanks Waves77 for the link; thank god there's a distro agnostic way of configuring mice.

I've never really had a problem with lower DPI mice. I majored in counterstrike during college and I used a plain-jane logitech 400dpi mouse the entire time without a problem:

I've tried several of the laser mice with crazy resolution, but honestly, all it did was make the mouse harder to configure.

One of the reasons I abhor macs is that it forces mouse acceleration down your throat. I know you can down load some shareware to get rid of it, but, seriously, should you need to install proprietary software to fix a bug in the operating system?

[itlnstln]

I like MS's implementation of "Enhance Pointer Presicion."  I like to keep the mouse at a faster setting to help move across 2 monitors, but, usually, this results in the pointer "jumping" when trying to do small movements.  The "Enhance Pointer Presicion" function eliminates this (with none of the acceleration "features").

[CaptCarrot]

I have an MX Revolution.

A) - My softwares says 100% (11 days).  Can't say I have ever tested that, but I have left it off the cradle for days at a time with very little ill effect.  The battery indicator on the mouse is very useful, and turns itself off if the mouse isn't moved for 10-15 seconds.

B & C I cannot comment on.

I can, however say that it is probably the best mouse I have owned. it is certainly the most expensive one I have ever bought.

What I like most is the scroll wheel, that can be either clicky or free rolling, and with the flick of your finger can roll from 10-20 seconds by itself.  great for long documents.

It is such a natural fit in my hand too...

Why did I buy it? well it looked good, but the major reason I bought it was it was the only decent wireless mouse I could find that had a charging stand.

Can't remember how long I have had it, but it is well over a year, still going strong.  And I have never turned it off either.

[Therac-25]

I'm currently rolling with one of these.  The only reason is because I got it for ~1/2 price (around $70 CDN when list price was $135).  I would never have paid full price for this thing.  Or, well, I might have paid full price for this thing and felt ripped off and returned it.  I had to return it twice anyway to get one that wasn't constantly triggering the thumb scroll wheel events.

Anyway, the battery life seems fine.  It has an LED battery life indicator on it that goes red when it's low, so it's kind of hard to really have issues.  I would certainly not use it as a travel mouse or laptop mouse or anything.  On that count, what I DO have an issue with with this mouse is the problems getting the charging contacts to contact.  It has it's good days and bad days -- some days I've had to put a pile of books beside it, with one sitting ontop of it to keep it pressed down so the contacts make contact so it would charge.

I don't see any acceleration issues, but I tend to acclimatize myself to a given mouse setup within a few days.  If I start worrying about acceleration, I'm going to be infront of my computer for hours on end trying to convince myself that it's either accelerating or not accelerating.  (FWIW, acceleration is about speed of movement -- the speed of the physical movement of the mouse has a non-linear relationship with the speed of the cursor. (I'd assume quadratic, but testing these things to that level of detail is almost impossible without a robot -- although a mock usb device module in Linux might work to test if Xorg is doing the accelerating.... hrm.... but that wouldn't test for hardware acceleration anyway)).

If you TRULY hate acceleration, then get a tablet and use the mouse on that -- I will break out my old Graphire tablet if I'm getting sensitive to acceleration.  It's usually enough to remind me that I don't hate acceleration that much.