The Logitech Cordless Radio Mouse
                                 
                               Dan Jordan


The Search for the Perfect Rodent!

Back in July I broke down and replaced my $20 mouse. It wasn't broken; 
I just couldn't stand the damned thing. I work primarily in Windows 
3.1 and require complete compatibility and even with updated drivers 
the cheap rat would hang my system. And the quirks with the mouse 
driver were just some of the things I disliked about that 
rodent.

I Hate Meeses to Pieces!

Hence the search for the perfect rodent began. But 
just what is the perfect mouse? To help define that question I made 
a list of things I hate about rats.

1>conflicts with Windows: Windows is the 
reason I bought a rat in the first place!

2>the mouse pointer goes ballistic with the slightest speed 
change

3>it hurts to hold onto a mouse for any length of 
time

4>the tail (cord) is always getting caught in the piles 
of stuff on my desk (the "mouse trap syndrome")

Windows Compatibility

Armed with my list of reasons to hate mice I started to sift through 
the list of rodents that are available for the PC. By insisting on 
Microsoft Windows 3.1 compatibility first, I was able to cut the field 
down considerably; with the mouse being such an integral part of a 
Windows PC, the field of choice was narrowed to major name brand players 
only. I also wanted to ensure that I could always get updated drivers 
and support. At this level of mouse systems you are ensured a basic 
level of programmable control over your rodent.

Acceleration Control

The ballistic effect of my $20 mouse was something that always irritated 
me and I was never able to entirely eliminate the phenomenon. This 
effect is characterized by the mouse pointer moving across your screen 
at uncontrollable speeds as you vary the speed of the physical mouse 
motion. Manufacturers claim that this effect is a feature, designed 
so you can get to the other side of your screen quicker<197>but I 
think it a bug, provided so the pointer can fly off the other side 
of the screen and hide more quickly. I turn this setting (acceleration) 
off, as I generally need the time to rethink just what I am doing 
all the way over there anyway. Cursor speed, click and double click 
rates, and ballistic effects are all standard controls in major player 
mouse gear, so my number one and two pet mouse peeves are taken care 
of by sticking to the big names.

Making It All . . . Fit

The third item on my hate list deals with ergonomics and the problems 
and solutions regarding this will vary from person to person depending 
on their work area, type of program, and the simple size of their 
hand. Ideally the perfect pointing device would be of a virtual (not 
really there) nature: you would just gesture at the monitor and the 
cursor would obey. The virtual mouse will surely appear before the 
virtual keyboard, but in the meantime, the next best rodent would 
be a cordless pressure-sensitive digitizer. On the other hand, 
have you priced these lately? Personally, I will wait for the price 
to come down or the virtual mouse to debut before spending that much 
on a rodent of any kind! Likewise, no manufactures are giving any 
kind of digitizers out for review so I established a new qualification 
for my perfect rodent, on the fly: a cost of $100 or less.

So, with my feet on the ground, and my wallet safely in my pocket, 
I searched through the order rodentia handling each mouse to 
size it up for comfort. I eliminated track balls almost immediately 
due to the amount of time I spend rat-handling: with a track ball 
the fingers must be bent in an unnatural position and held there for 
constant control, and this position ultimately causes a great deal 
of wrist and finger strain.

The next rodent to catch my eye was the mouse pen. Pen mice 
attempt to simulate the feel of a Flair felt-tip pen with varying 
degrees of success but the tail (control wire to serial port) gives 
them the feel of a the cheapo pen chained to the table at the bank. 
Irritating... and another seemingly good rodent idea bites the dust.

What can one do about the regular ol' mouse to make it more 
comfortable to hold? For insight into this problem I looked to the 
mouse-pioneering (1984) Macintosh and its users. Surely by now 
there would be a whole passel of perfect rodents to use on the Mac!

Not!

Mac users basically have the same old one-button mouse they started 
with, though now some PC mouse manufacturers are migrating their products 
to the Mac scene. (Sort of reminded me of Henry Ford's promise of 
any car color you wanted, so long as you wanted black.) There are 
mouse covers for Mac-mice, ingenious devices that merely snap 
on to a standard Mac mouse, giving a larger and somewhat more ergonomic 
design. The idea is a good one for a closed market such as the Macintosh's, 
but on the PC side of the street, there are several manufactures and 
styles to choose from, making a uniform "cover" impossible 
as well as unnecessary (why cover? redesign!). On the other hand, 
the idea that the size of the mouse might be a factor in comfort 
brought me to the Logitech Cordless Radio Mouse.

Radio Killed the Wired Mouse Stars

The Radio is large; looks like a mouse on steroids, frankly. Stuffed 
inside the Radio Mouse is a three-volt lithium battery that takes 
up a fair amount of room; next to the battery is a seven-eighths inch 
diameter ball that provides positive cursor movement. The marvel that 
gets rid of the rat tail (and with no tail to get caught in the various 
traps of work piled on my desk, this mouse was off and running!), 
the very heart of the Radio Mouse, is an eight channel programmable 
transmitter, that can signal a receiver (a "mouse box") up 
to one meter (39 inches) away.

The mouse box connects to a serial port, and has an eight-pole rotary 
switch to tune into the channel the mouse itself is on. The missing 
tail from the mouse turns out not to have been eliminated entirely, 
rather it has been moved to the mouse house, enabling it to be moved 
around to find the best location for reception. Right off, I noticed 
that placing the mouse box under the monitor or on the computer case 
itself may cause erratic results. The boxtail is also one meter long, 
so the choice of location is broad indeed.

To program the mouse transmitter channel, you flip the Radio Mouse 
on its back and open the door in its belly. The door provides access 
to the control ball and the battery, but when this door is half way 
open, a green light will flash out a numerical code telling you what 
channel the mouse is programmed to! By clicking the left mouse button 
you move the channel setting "up" one setting for each click 
of the button. This is actually quite easy to do, as my two year old 
daughter Hannah can attest, for she has reprogrammed the mouse on 
two different occasions when it wasn't put away in a childproof location.

To install the mouse software, I first deleted the contents of my 
c:\mouse directory and installed the Logitech drivers (no problem); 
then I ran the win3ins.exe program supplied with the rodent. 
This program reconfigures Windows to use the Radio Mouse. The 
next order of business was to run mtest.exe to adjust the mouse 
speed, click and double click rates, and to turn off the ballistic 
setting. Windows has since performed without any of the mouse-related 
problems that I was experiencing before.

In fact, there have been only three situations in which the mouse 
has not performed properly, or the software failed to load:

When the mouse box is blocked by the CPU or monitor from communicating 
with the mouse (solution: move the box)

When the mouse itself is in a child proof location that is  
over a meter from the mouse box (solution: bring it back)

When Hannah has reprogrammed the mouse transmitter frequency 
(solution: secure the mouse better)

I must admit that I had serious concerns about the reliability of 
radio control on a peripheral, what with all the potential for 
interference. But when I went to Computer City, the salesman told 
me that if my concerns about interference were realized, I could 
return the Radio Rodent for a refund. So far, it has remained on 
my desk. In an office environment, of course, the potential for 
interference is magnified, but with eight different channels to choose 
from an effective broadcasting radius of one meter, Logitech has gone 
to some lengths to ensure that there would be no interference from 
neighboring rodents in a work group.

Conclusion

The Radio Mouse is quite literally a handful, but this is not 
necessarily bad. The feel is comfortable, with the mouse buttons placed 
far enough away from the body to let the fingers lay comfortably along 
the ratback. It has solved my Windows compatibility problems 
and the lack of a tail is a definite plus. I think I've successfully 
concluded my search for the perfect $100 rodent.