Hardware advocacy (yeah, I'm going there)
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When I was a young lad and I played a lot of FPS games, there's was always something about the way the IntelliMouse felt that nothing else could match. When I could no longer get them I gradually just stopped playing FPS games because of frustration that I couldn't get another mouse to feel the same and I couldn't quite adapt to the way other mice moved no matter how hard I tried. I've tried all manner of hardware for both gaming and development, but IntelliMouse + Comfort Curve keyboards just do it for me in a way nothing else can. The mouse I settled on with the most similar cursor feel to it is actually a Gigabyte mouse right now which I like, but I'm excited to see they rereleased the IntelliMouse! I'll have to give it a try to see if it actually is as good as I remember it or if that's just nostalgia talking.
Blog: [Code Index] By Mike Marynowski | Business: Singulink
Mike Marynowski wrote:
I'm excited to see they rereleased the IntelliMouse! I'll have to give it a try to see if it actually is as good as I remember it or if that's just nostalgia talking.
My experience so far with the 'new' one: It's *not* just nostalgia. It's much better than anything I had tried since the last of my originals had died.
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dandy72 wrote:
Microsoft IntelliMouse
It's what I'm using, and I really can't remember when I bought it...I think it's been on the last 4 builds, so that make it around 15 years old. I do remember that it cost around $40 USD at the time. I also use a MS wireless mouse for the laptop. That one is at least 10 years old. Both still work perfectly. If either quit, I will be opting for MS again. :) The keyboard imho is the thing I'm most likely to miss when it finally goes. It's an HP from 1998...from my first Windows system. I had to find a PS/2 to USB converter for the new rig. :)
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
I do the same thing with mice and my favorite keyboard is an old IBM that I connect to USB via a PS2-USB converter.
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I have a Logitech M705 "Wireless Laser Optical" at work, and another M705 I travel with for my laptop, and a very similar model (rechargeable battery, docking station) Logitech MX1000 for my main desktop at home, that mouse must be over 10 years old now and still going strong, had to replace the docking station power brick in 2016, but managed to find the correct exact replacement brick on ebay. It just feels right in terms of weight and shape, and guess I have just got used to it over the god knows how many years I have had it. The M705 battery lasts for ages which also helps. Feels really weird if I use any others now. [Logitech for Business Marathon Mouse M705](https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/marathon-mouse-m705) [Logitech MX1000 Laser Cordless Mouse Review & Rating | PCMag.com](https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1641270,00.asp)
Dave Find Me On:Web|Youtube|Facebook|Twitter|LinkedIn Folding Stats: Team CodeProject
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I have a Logitech M705 "Wireless Laser Optical" at work, and another M705 I travel with for my laptop, and a very similar model (rechargeable battery, docking station) Logitech MX1000 for my main desktop at home, that mouse must be over 10 years old now and still going strong, had to replace the docking station power brick in 2016, but managed to find the correct exact replacement brick on ebay. It just feels right in terms of weight and shape, and guess I have just got used to it over the god knows how many years I have had it. The M705 battery lasts for ages which also helps. Feels really weird if I use any others now. [Logitech for Business Marathon Mouse M705](https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/marathon-mouse-m705) [Logitech MX1000 Laser Cordless Mouse Review & Rating | PCMag.com](https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1641270,00.asp)
Dave Find Me On:Web|Youtube|Facebook|Twitter|LinkedIn Folding Stats: Team CodeProject
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It doesn't look bad. I've sworn off Logitech however when their drivers started getting ridiculously bloated. Have they changed their ways?
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These days I guess Windows comes bundled with a *lot* of drivers. But the 2-3 Logitech mice I've owned (granted, well over a decade ago now) all required their proprietary drivers, otherwise they weren't being recognized. And they were huge. And included other software (that couldn't be unselected in the installer) that only served to shamelessly promote their other products.
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For years--nay, decades--I've stuck with my old Microsoft IntelliMouse - I've had a few of them, but they've eventually all developed annoying quirks...the left mouse button would stop working and "drop" a window as I'm dragging it by its caption...right-clicks that wouldn't register unless I tried a few times, pressing harder each time...that sort of thing. I've taken apart/cleaned these a number of times, but in the end, I had to give up on all of them. Some just died altogether. You can find the older model like mine on Amazon and eBay - but those who have them know they're no longer available, and they're asking $100, $200, even $250 for them. *That's* not gonna happen. I've tried many alternatives over the years. I must be very fussy about mouse shapes and how it fits in your hand, because I hate just about every mouse that's in stores nowadays. I'm not a fan of wireless mice, so that limits my options. I've always found wireless mice to be trying too hard to go to sleep to save the battery - so if I'm slowing down to do some precision selection (moving just a few pixels at a time), it might go into sleep mode, so I have to give the mouse a jerk to wake it up, which means the cursor is now at the other end of the monitor. That could be just me, but my experience with them has been consistent. After I've purchased 4 or 5 different models, I had to wonder why I should expect a different outcome and have given up on them. 2 months ago I found some cheap off-brand $30 wired mouse I liked the shape of. I've put up with it for this long - it's not horrible. Less than 2 weeks ago however, the scrollwheel started to misbehave - if I scroll down 3-4 lines, it'll do it but also scroll back up a bit, so I have to fight it constantly, and simply scrolling to the end of a document is now taking roughly double the time it would ordinarily require. So I told myself if Microsoft ever ran another batch of their original IntelliMouse - I'd buy enough of them to last me a lifetime. My lifetime, that is. Then something unexpected happened: MS has brought back that very model. Well, a slightly updated version, but still the same basic model. Wired, USB, optical, that's all I want. Nothing fancy. So as I promised myself, I purchased 5 of them, and I just received the whole lot at lunchtime today. I've been using one of them since. I forgot how well these simply *work*. Call me a shill if you want, I don't care. [This](https://www.amazon.ca/Microsoft-HDQ-00001-Classic-IntelliMouse/dp/B076C
Recently, i switched from a Microsoft mouse to a Logitech Gaming one (a G300S if you're interested), which is both inexpensive and pretty useful as it has a lot of programmable buttons, unfortunately, to program them you need Logitech drivers, but once you do so, and the profile is stored in the mouse itself you shouldn't need them.
"Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again." Ray Bradbury
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Recently, i switched from a Microsoft mouse to a Logitech Gaming one (a G300S if you're interested), which is both inexpensive and pretty useful as it has a lot of programmable buttons, unfortunately, to program them you need Logitech drivers, but once you do so, and the profile is stored in the mouse itself you shouldn't need them.
"Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again." Ray Bradbury
I'm gonna rain on your parade. :-D Don't take it the wrong way, just expression my own personal view. This is exactly the type of mouse I started purchasing after my last IntelliMouse died - I thought the extra buttons would come in handy, but instead over time I realized the fancier the mouse, the less useful the extra features tend to be - I'd often find myself accidentally hitting the extra buttons for example. I had one that had a button on top dedicated to changing the DPI setting on the fly - who needs to change that after it's been set once? (I didn't buy it for that reason)... Just as can happen with software, to me these were always cases of packing in extra features, at the cost of usability. I could even do without my IntelliMouse's extra two buttons on its left side (mapped to the browser's Back/Forward buttons) - but fortunately they're not positioned in such a way that I ever hit them accidentally. Of course YMMV, and it's perfectly reasonable for you to swear by yours. That's why there's different models. :-) And that's why I'm happy "my" simpler model has made a comeback.
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I have a Logitech M705 "Wireless Laser Optical" at work, and another M705 I travel with for my laptop, and a very similar model (rechargeable battery, docking station) Logitech MX1000 for my main desktop at home, that mouse must be over 10 years old now and still going strong, had to replace the docking station power brick in 2016, but managed to find the correct exact replacement brick on ebay. It just feels right in terms of weight and shape, and guess I have just got used to it over the god knows how many years I have had it. The M705 battery lasts for ages which also helps. Feels really weird if I use any others now. [Logitech for Business Marathon Mouse M705](https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/marathon-mouse-m705) [Logitech MX1000 Laser Cordless Mouse Review & Rating | PCMag.com](https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1641270,00.asp)
Dave Find Me On:Web|Youtube|Facebook|Twitter|LinkedIn Folding Stats: Team CodeProject
Ditto on the M705, for both home and work. For my laptop I use the very similar Logitech MX2 Anywhere. It's a Bluetooth wireless and rechargeable. I've had to charge it twice in the last 9 months - once when I got it and once about 6 months in. The 705s however run for years on the same batteries. I've replaced them once on my home system in ~5 years, and so far not at all at work in about 2.5 years.
Da Bomb
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I'm gonna rain on your parade. :-D Don't take it the wrong way, just expression my own personal view. This is exactly the type of mouse I started purchasing after my last IntelliMouse died - I thought the extra buttons would come in handy, but instead over time I realized the fancier the mouse, the less useful the extra features tend to be - I'd often find myself accidentally hitting the extra buttons for example. I had one that had a button on top dedicated to changing the DPI setting on the fly - who needs to change that after it's been set once? (I didn't buy it for that reason)... Just as can happen with software, to me these were always cases of packing in extra features, at the cost of usability. I could even do without my IntelliMouse's extra two buttons on its left side (mapped to the browser's Back/Forward buttons) - but fortunately they're not positioned in such a way that I ever hit them accidentally. Of course YMMV, and it's perfectly reasonable for you to swear by yours. That's why there's different models. :-) And that's why I'm happy "my" simpler model has made a comeback.
Don't worry, it's raining season here, so my parade is ready for it :laugh: . I actually purchased it for all the extra buttons (and they're mapped to a lot of navigation shortcuts in Visual Studio), my previous mouse (a Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000) had an extra "zoom" button, that at first though it was was a fancy gimmick, but proved pretty useful as i could remap it to do something more useful, so when it started to fail i look for another one or something similar, but all the ones i could find where wireless, which i didn't like, so i waited until i found one wired and with more buttons. However, i still miss the solid feeling of that Microsoft mouse, as the Logitech one feels too light for my tastes.
"Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again." Ray Bradbury
-
For years--nay, decades--I've stuck with my old Microsoft IntelliMouse - I've had a few of them, but they've eventually all developed annoying quirks...the left mouse button would stop working and "drop" a window as I'm dragging it by its caption...right-clicks that wouldn't register unless I tried a few times, pressing harder each time...that sort of thing. I've taken apart/cleaned these a number of times, but in the end, I had to give up on all of them. Some just died altogether. You can find the older model like mine on Amazon and eBay - but those who have them know they're no longer available, and they're asking $100, $200, even $250 for them. *That's* not gonna happen. I've tried many alternatives over the years. I must be very fussy about mouse shapes and how it fits in your hand, because I hate just about every mouse that's in stores nowadays. I'm not a fan of wireless mice, so that limits my options. I've always found wireless mice to be trying too hard to go to sleep to save the battery - so if I'm slowing down to do some precision selection (moving just a few pixels at a time), it might go into sleep mode, so I have to give the mouse a jerk to wake it up, which means the cursor is now at the other end of the monitor. That could be just me, but my experience with them has been consistent. After I've purchased 4 or 5 different models, I had to wonder why I should expect a different outcome and have given up on them. 2 months ago I found some cheap off-brand $30 wired mouse I liked the shape of. I've put up with it for this long - it's not horrible. Less than 2 weeks ago however, the scrollwheel started to misbehave - if I scroll down 3-4 lines, it'll do it but also scroll back up a bit, so I have to fight it constantly, and simply scrolling to the end of a document is now taking roughly double the time it would ordinarily require. So I told myself if Microsoft ever ran another batch of their original IntelliMouse - I'd buy enough of them to last me a lifetime. My lifetime, that is. Then something unexpected happened: MS has brought back that very model. Well, a slightly updated version, but still the same basic model. Wired, USB, optical, that's all I want. Nothing fancy. So as I promised myself, I purchased 5 of them, and I just received the whole lot at lunchtime today. I've been using one of them since. I forgot how well these simply *work*. Call me a shill if you want, I don't care. [This](https://www.amazon.ca/Microsoft-HDQ-00001-Classic-IntelliMouse/dp/B076C
I loved the Intellimouse, and then the Logitech MX510. But - for the last three years, I've been using a Steelseries Sensei RAW (which now has been superseded by the Sensei 310). I love the Sensei as it is perfect for ambidextrous use. It has two programmable side buttons on each side, and a sensitivity change switch on top - which allows you to switch between two distinct "speed" settings. Handy when you are pixel fiddling with images.