Parrothead Jeff

First off, let me say that I’m not a gamer by any means, so this mouse might seem like a bit of overkill for someone like me. It might seem strange for someone who loves their laptop’s touchpad to go out and spend $40 on a mouse, but I had several good reasons.

So why would I go out and spend this much on a mouse? There are a few different reasons. The real reason I got it was work related. My job requires a lot of navigating between different windows along with a lot of copying and pasting while trying to stay on a time table. I wanted something to help make all this easier. This mouse looked like a good way to accomplish that goal and it has exceeded all of my expectations!

Like I said, I was looking for a tool to make life easier at work, so let me describe my job to give you a better idea of why I wanted something like this in the first place. I work in a call center for a major telecommunications company troubleshooting problems with customers’ T1 and DSL connectivity. The computer I work on is a Windows 2000 box with at least four windows that I have to use for at least every call. While working in those windows, I have to do a lot of copying and pasting to get information where it’s needed. In the middle of talking to the customer on the other end of the line, I have to fill in all the information and start troubleshooting. Oh yeah, the company wants us to keep our average call time to about seven minutes, too.

Several other workers have custom keyboards and mice, so I figured this might be a good idea for me. I started searching around the internet to see what’s out there and I saw a listing for an EIGHT BUTTON mouse! What’s more, the buttons were all independantly programmable! That mouse looked like it might be exactly what I was looking for. That mouse was the MX-510, but I found the 500 when I went to Fry’s to check out their mouse selection for myself. The biggest difference between the two is that the 510 has a better optical engine so that it can track more precisely and keep up with quicker movements for gamers. I don’t really need that, so I didn’t feel the need to spend an additional $10 for the cool color on the 510.

So what’s so great about the MX-500? Where do I start? I’ll start with the EIGHT programmable buttons. Eight buttons might sound like overkill, but to tell you the truth, I’d like ‘em to add even more! Sure, a two button mouse might get the job done, but I think I’ll be using all eight on a regular basis. Of course, there are the two normal buttons for left and right clicks and a scroll wheel for web navigation, but there’s a few extra buttons that are really nice. Two of those extra buttons reside on the left side of the mouse and are set to forward and back functions in a browser by default. The other four buttons are on the top of the mouse. One of the buttons is actually the scroll wheel itself, which can be clicked. Clicking the scroll wheel will allow you to move the mouse to scroll through a page by moving the mouse by default. Two more buttons on the top are for “cruise control” scrolling, so you just hold them down to scroll up or down. The last button was one that I was really attracted to. Right in the middle of the top of the mouse is a “Program Selector” button. Clicking this button will bring up a small window witha list of the currently open windows so that you can just click on one without having to move your pointer to the taskbar and find the right window. The other nice thing about that pop up window is that it shows the whole name of what’s in the window which can be very helpful when you have ten opon windows!

The actions I describe above for the buttons are just the defaults. The really cool thing is that you can set any of the buttons to do nearly anything. The list of options is very long, but it’s equally impressive. Listing all the possibilities would take up too much space and time, so I’ll just give a few examples. Some of the options are forward and back in a web page, any specified keystroke or combination, cut, copy, paste, resize a window, minimize all windows, etc. You get the idea.

As you can probably guess, I’ll be programming a couple of buttons for copying and pasting! Another button will probably act just like the F10 key as that’s a very frequently used key at work. I’ll probably leave the “Program Selector” button as is, but I might assign that function to clicking the scroll wheel to make that function easier to use.

As I said before, I love the touchpad on my laptop, but using the MX-500 has me thinking about buying another one to use at home! All the buttons are nicely located and make navigating so much easier.

One note that I have to throw in is that this is a corded mouse. The trend these days seems to be for cordless everything, but I happen to have a couple of very good reasons for going with a cord. The first reason is that a cordless mouse world be much easier for someone to walk off with at work. I wish I could trust everyone there, but I’ve been warned against leaving wireless equipment laying around. I didn’t want to have to worry about battery life, either. When a call comes in, I have to be ready to deal with it RIGHT NOW and a dead battery would definitely have an adverse effect on my job performance! Last, but definitely not least, there was a rather large difference in price. The closest cordless mice as far as functions go to the MX-500 are the Logitech MX-700 and MX-1000 which carry price tags of $69.95 and $79.95 respectively. I really couldn’t see spending an extra thirty to fourty dollars on going cordless.

So what’s the verdict? The MX-500 is GREAT! It has to be the most functional mouse I’ve ever seen and a great addition to anyone’s computing experience. If you’re a gamer, get the MX-510. If you absolutely have ot go wireless, go ahead and get the MX-700 or MX-1000. If you’d like all the added functionality at a more reasonable price, go with the MX-500. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with any of these mice!