Logitech Bluetooth Mouse M555b Review

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(More customer reviews)I've been using the Logitech Nano mouse with tiny USB dongle for some time and love the friction-free scroll wheel. The only problem is that my notebook only has two USB ports and sometimes I need both for something other than the mouse (and some devices don't seem to function correctly through a USB hub). So I've wanted a Bluetooth version of the Nano for quite some time. The M555b combines the two features I "needed" into one unit and I've been pretty happy with it so far.
The M555b has one programmable button just behind the scroll wheel, similar to the Nano, but not the other two extra buttons. Not a problem for me since I tend not to use the additional buttons, but it should be pointed out for those who do. The M555b wheel still has side-to-side scroll functionality. I wish they had kept the shape and design of the Nano in this new mouse since I prefer that style and feel. The M555b looks and feels somewhat "cheap" by comparison. That's just a matter of preference however... your results may vary. Also, the M555b doesn't come with a protective mouse sleeve for transport, like my Nano did. For the price of this mouse, you'd think they could throw that in.
Another thing I don't care for on the M555b is the battery cover. To access, you hold the mouse upside down, press a button at the back of the mouse, and lift the bottom off the mouse. It just seems more awkward than having a little trap door cover on the bottom, but that's also a preference issue... doesn't really get in the way of usability.
At one point, just a few days into using the mouse, it stopped communicating with my computer and I figured the (included) alkaline starter batteries had lost charge. I tried several other sets of regular and rechargeable batteries. Also tried redoing the Bluetooth connection, etc., with no luck. I decided to return it as defective, but when I tried again the next day it started working and has been fine ever since. Don't know what the problem was, but the hiccup seems to have gone away.
As with other Bluetooth mice, this one has a touch of lag on occasion, especially if it's been sitting for a few minutes without moving. Overall, it doesn't seem as bad as other Bluetooth mice I've used, but I wouldn't recommend this for gamers or people who demand ultra precision and responsiveness. With general use, it probably won't be an issue.
If you need several programmable buttons, look elsewhere. Check a local store to see if you like the style and feel of this before buying since it's rather plain-looking. Overall, I give the M555b good ratings because it gives back a USB port while keeping the free-wheeling scroll, which I'd be hard pressed to do without now (great feature!).

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The Logitech Bluetooth Mouse M555b. Speedy and sleek, offering wireless connectivity with your Bluetooth -enabled computer. And you don\'t need a receiver. Hyper-fast scrolling lets you fly through long documents and Web pages with a single spin of a nearly frictionless scroll wheel. Laser tracking delivers smooth, responsive, precise cursor control on surfaces that cause problems for standard optical mice, such as polished or wood-grain tables. The low-battery indicator eliminates surprises. The smart sleep mode feature and on/off switch extend battery life.

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Belkin Washable Mouse (F5L007-SCROLL) Review

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(More customer reviews)Belkin is well known for the accessories they make for the Mac, the iPod and just general gadgets like USB hubs. I've been very impressed with every Belkin product I've ever owned. Except perhaps this one, the Belkin Washable Mouse.
How the Washable Mouse differs from most of the other mouses out there is that it can be, as the name implies, washed. And not just wiped off, but rinsed under running water. All mouses become dirty after a while, no matter how good your hygiene is. And you usually dig out some cleaner and a cloth to gently rub the gunk off. The Washable Mouse makes it so you can be more liberal with your cleaner and water if you choose. I just had to douse the mouse in water to see how it held up, and it worked just fine after wiping it down with a towel.
The mouse looks and feels like a traditional mouse except that the top part your hand sets on is sealed in a rubber-like coat. The Washable Mouse features two buttons (if you push them both you get a center-click, something I've never found a use for) and a unique Scroll Pad. The Scroll Pad has no moving parts and is touch sensitive. The Scroll Pad can also side scroll but the oblong shape of it, about the width of your finger, does not bode well for side scrolling.
The Washable Mouse tracks well, although I did have to turn my speed way down from my Mighty Mouse settings. That's mainly because Apple sets the Mighty Mouse at such slow speeds that I always have to crank tracking up one notch from the top speed. As for the Scroll Pad, it didn't seem to scroll very well vertically or horizontally. It was as if it wasn't sensing my fingers some of the time. I found it very frustrating to use.
I found the left and right click buttons to be placed in an uncomfortable position and they felt, well, just plain weird. The rubber coating over the buttons had a much different feel than a traditional mouse.
And the mouse is small. Really small. Granted, Belkin does list the Washable Mouse in their laptop accessories area so that probably explains the small size. That said, I found the mouse just uncomfortable in general.
If you need a mouse that you can clean when it gets funky, the Washable Mouse is definitely for you. You may not be happy with the size and certainly you won't be impressed with the Scroll Pad, but you'll have the cleanest mouse in the neighborhood.

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We all know what it's like to return to the same mouse day in and day out. Yesterday's sandwich and this morning's donut has created a sticky, unsanitary sheen that makes working messy business.
This is where the Belkin F5L007-SCROLL Washable Mouse comes in. With all the functionality and performance you'd expect of your mouse--including optical technology and a versatile one-touch scroll pad--this one-of-a-kind mouse can be washed with warm soap and water, ensuring that you can stay comfortable and sanitary while you work or play.
All the Features, Now Washable With a water-resistant design, the washable mouse can endure spills and you can hand-wash it right under a running faucet. Dirt, food, liquids, germs, bacteria--all wash right off with some soap and water. Of course, this washability doesn't come at the cost of features: The mouse employs an optical engine with 1200 dpi for high sensitivity that works on many household surfaces, including upholstery, glass, and wood. A scroll pad allows both vertical and horizontal scrolling with one easy touch. (Horizontal scrolling is only available when used with Windows Vista.)
The mouse features an ergonomic design that works for both righties and lefties. The Belkin Washable Mouse is compatible with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X v10.4, and it connects via USB. It is backed by a 3-year warranty.

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Kensington Slimblade Trackball USB 2.0 for PC and Mac, K72327US Review

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(More customer reviews)UPDATE (16 October 2010): Kensington released their TrackballWorks in June of this year, which release enables users to customize the Slimblade Trackball's four buttons, adjust pointer speed/acceleration/function, and other features. The pointer sensitivity is much improved, though still not as good as the pointer sensitivity module found in the venerable MouseWorks software.
On the other hand, the ability to customize the four buttons of the Slimblade Trackball is a welcome (and much needed) improvement. This device should have shipped with this software.
The advent of programmable buttons places the Slimblade Trackball in a category of its own. It surpasses by a wide margin the ergonomics and aesthetics of the Expert Mouse. The scrolling function is superb, a perfect complement to a trackpad device. I am surprised by how much the Slimblade Trackball just "disappears" while I am working with it.
My only complaint is that the buttons are sometimes too sensitive, something that can be avoided by adjusting how much resting pressure one places on the device's surface.
Those of us looking for an attractive and elegant multifunction pointing device need look no further. The Slimblade Trackball now has software worthy of its stunning good looks.
(The previous version of this review rated the Slimblade Trackball at 2 stars, was found helpful by 190 of 201 people, and was titled "Missed Opportunity".)
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(Amazon's system was not properly updating my review, so I deleted and reposted. At the time I did this, only 1 of 4 people found my review helpful. Even so.)
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UPDATE (9 March 2009): After 4 days of continuous use. I am packing it in and reverting back to the Expert Mouse. If one needs either precise cursor control, programmable buttons or application-sensitive behavior, the Slimblade Trackball is unusable with the supplied software.
I've been using trackballs (mainly Kensington) since 1993 and am no stranger to change. This trackball simply was not designed with an expert user in mind, and I hope those who read my review will consider that it is written from this perspective. It is meant to inform professionals and expert users whose software and hardware demands are unusually high.
If you are an expert user who needs a pointing device to be application-aware, or if you need high-precision cursor control, this device is not one you should consider.
Tempting as this device may be for people frustrated with the terrible hardware design of the Expert Mouse, the Slimblade Trackball cannot replace the Expert Mouse.
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The Slimblade Trackball is really a missed opportunity for Kensington. This device has so much potential but the software limitations make this device just barely usable.
The two major components of the Slimblade Trackball are the hardware design and the software affordances. Let's start with the good.
THE HARDWARE
==========
In order to understand what is amazing about the Kensington Slimblade Trackball, one should be aware of the last redesign of the Expert Mouse. That design is quite horrendous. The steep angle of the plastic housing strained the wrist tendons so badly that the device shipped with a faux leather pad that attached to the trackball to elevate the wrist. Besides being ugly, the pad kludge didn't work very well. Strained wrists are a common symptom among users of the Expert Mouse Trackball.
The Slimblade Trackball rectifies this situation. Big Time.
The low profile of the trackball housing is not only aesthetically pleasing, it also allows users to use the device with hand and wrist only moderately angled. The ball rolls smoothly (though it is an ugly color) and the buttons are very sleek as they are cut out of the housing. Clicks are unfortunately hollow-sounding, but the tactile response is superb, the buttons requiring a firm but shallow press for activation. The new device is a pleasure to handle physically.
The engineering of the trackball well is clever. Plastic bearings similar to those in the Expert Mouse Trackball keep the ball gliding smoothly, with the difference that these bearings are sealed in their sockets with only a portion of the bearing visible. The holes which contain the electronics that register ball movement do not appear to emit light. When the ball is rotated around its Y-axis (running through the top and bottom of the device), the electronics make an audible clicking noise. Think iPod scrollwheel sound. The faint sound could be a problem in quiet office environments, especially for users who do quite a bit of scrolling or zooming.
In all, the hardware of the device is excellent. The thought and care which went into the engineering shows, and if look and feel were all that mattered, Kensington would have produced a pointing device worthy of admiration and celebration.
Unfortunately for Kensington, there's also the bad and the ugly. Namely . . .
THE SOFTWARE
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(I'm testing the Slimblade Trackball software on a PowerMac G5 2 x 2.5 GHz running Mac OS X v. 10.5.6. Windows users may have an experience different than mine.)
First off, I want to say that the software seems also to have received quite a bit of attention from the designers at Kensington. Unfortunately, what those designers produced seems to be the victim of poor market analysis.
Some Slimblade Trackball users have forgiven Kensington for omitting the ability to program the buttons. I am not one of these users. The inability to reprogram the buttons is arrogance at its worst. When Steve Jobs and Jon Ives give users an extra-strength dose of designerly arrogance, they often succeed in curing ailments users didn't even realize they had (hockey puck mouse excepted). I'm here to assure you that the software designers at Kensington are neither Steve Jobs nor Jon Ives.
At all.
First, the drivers for the Slimblade Trackball do not have any user-accessible interface. Period. OK, that's not entirely true. The installer places a pointer-shaped item in the menubar. Clicking on that item reveals two items. 1) A dimmed line reporting that the Kensington Slimblade Trackball is active, and 2) a link to Kensington's online tutorial. As we all know (as of 5 March 2009), that online tutorial is not yet available. So, the link sends users to the promotional microsite for the Slimblade Trackball as if advertising will convince them that nothing's wrong. I suppose one can navigate one's way to the sparse FAQ which contains 8 items as of this writing.
If you can't read the sign that says Things are Not Good(tm) then look over yonder. Yup. That's the milestone for Here Comes Ugly(tm)
THE UGLY
======
Users not only cannot program the device's buttons, but they also cannot customize the speed and acceleration of the device outside of the operating system software provided by Apple or a piece of third-party software.* This is a problem of gargantuan proportions and has been documented at length in this TidBITS article: [...].
I have a 23" Cinema Display and a 17" Studio Display hooked together in a single extended desktop. I need my pointing device tracking to be set high. Setting the mouse tracking to high is possible with Apple's "Keyboard & Mouse" System Preference. The problem comes when moving the device slowly, as one might do when selecting text. The differences in slow and fast cursor tracking in Apple's Keyboard & Mouse System Preference settings render the Slimblade trackball practically unusable on medium-to-large desktops.
By removing the ability of users to customize slow and fast tracking speed--something that the Expert Mouse Trackball software does provide--Kensington has effectively turned what should have been a magnificent product into something only a mother could love, or at least a committee of marketroids who got their way over the tearful objections of old-skool Kensington software devs. Don't worry devs, having bought this device I feel your pain and then some.
At present, Kensington has no plans to offer programmable buttons for this device. One can only hope future software releases will enable users to customize the acceleration settings for the Slimblade Trackball just as users of the Expert Mouse Trackball are able to customize their settings.
CONCLUSION
========
The hardware engineers at Kensington deserve raises and your first-born. This is a beautiful device.
On the other hand, the managers of the software design team should have their computers confiscated and other really awful things like getting raisins for dessert.
The Kensington Slimblade Trackball is like a gorgeous date with a bland personality. You don't mind hanging out awhile but you hope something better will come along soon.
* My limited testing of USB Overdrive as a third-party driver has been unable to access the media buttons (the upper ones) at all, suggesting to me that the upper buttons are not regular mouse buttons at all.

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Now the ball does it all Your computing experience just got smoother, faster and easier with the Kensington SlimBlade(TM) Trackball. Choose navigation mode to control cursor and scrolling. Media mode controls volume, play/pause, stop, and track forward/backward, while view mode zooms in/out, and pans. And it does it all with the ball to put complete control at your fingertips. You can even keep an eye on which application you are in and which function is being performed with the heads-up display on your monitor.Mac and PC compatible, including Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Mac OS X. USB 2.0.

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Kensington Expert Mouse Optical USB Trackball for PC or Mac 64325 Review

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(More customer reviews)Almost every day I work for hours using a Computer Aided Design program, and over the years have found the Kensington Expert Trackball to be an indispensible labor (and arm) saving device. You get so much with so little movement! I was looking to buy a new one.
I had misgivings about this product after reading some "Worse than Bad" reviews that were in this forum. Still, either because hope springs eternal or a fool and his money are soon parted, I went ahead and ordered one.
Out of the box ball rotation was _The Worst_ as others had said. I had deadlines, however, so decided to use it to see if anything would improve. Two hours later it had "broken in".
Trackball Wizards, my number five is on the trophy shelf. The Seven is AAMMAAZZIINNGG. Totally silent movement; virtually frictionless rotation; excellent functionality, and it has GOT to have one of the most eloquent designs of any input device on the market.
As an added bonus the scroll ring beats any scroll wheel I have used, anywhere.
Congratulations to Kensington for creating a truly superior product.

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The best trackball ever made has just gotten better. Designed for PCs and Mac's, the new Expert Mouse employs Kensington's Diamond Eye™ optical technology for smooth, precise cursor movement. Surrounding the ball, we have a brand new implementation of our award winning Scroll Ring™ that puts scrolling right at your fingertips. More comfortable than ever, the Expert Mouse even comes with a soft new wrist rest-right in the box! You get all of these great new features along with the same, large ball, exceptional control, and ease-of-use that has set the industry standard for more than 15 years.

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