Logitech Cordless Presenter Review

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Bluetooth Meets PowerPoint

If you're a public speaker, you need to think on your feet or be able to field questions. And you'll give a better performance if you're able to talk on your feet -- to move or walk around a little instead of standing stock-still at a podium, or staying leashed to your laptop PC by having to tap a key or click a mouse to move through slides in a PowerPoint presentation.

That's the idea behind Logitech's Cordless Presenter, a triple-function remote control that uses the latest Bluetooth wireless technology to let you click back and forth through PC presentations while strolling up to 30 feet from your computer. It's also a laser pointer, so you can wiggle a red dot to emphasize items on the presentation screen.

And it's a pocket-sized, cordless, optical mouse, so you can use it with not just PowerPoint but all your programs if you crave something more comfortable than your notebook's touchpad or pointing stick -- or more maintenance-free than your old, frequent-cleaning-required, rolling-ball mouse.

The Cordless Presenter is a cool gadget that installs in seconds and works smoothly; anyone whose business depends on daily travel and PowerPoint pitches should check it out. But we found one minor flaw for comfortable, one-handed use, and a major flaw for budget buyers: a $200 price tag.

A Small Blue Banana

One woman in our office remarked, "These things get more phallic every day," but everyone else we showed it to admired the 6 by 2-inch Cordless Presenter's curvy blue shape. With the two supplied AA batteries installed, it weighs five ounces -- or 6.5 ounces when packed into its snug-fitting zipper case alongside its thumb-sized Bluetooth receiver.

The latter plugs into the USB port of a Windows 98, Me, 2000, or XP computer. Our Win 2000 machine popped up Found New Hardware, Mini Receiver, and USB Interface Device dialog boxes in rapid succession and was ready to go in a flash -- the flash of the signal-sent LED that illuminates after you press a "connect" button on the Presenter's underside, normally needed only during initial setup (the LED changes from green to red and flashes quickly if you move out of range, which proved at least half again the rated 30-foot distance in our tests).

You probably won't need to install the provided MouseWare 9.5 driver software, unless you want to reprogram the default functions of the device's two oval buttons -- forward and back in "presentation mode," left and right in "mouse mode" -- or use PowerPoint 97 or Lotus Freelance 97 instead of PowerPoint 2000 or 2002, which don't recognize the "back" button without MouseWare installed. In lieu of a scroll wheel, a pair of tiny nubs between the main buttons serve as up and down scroll buttons in mouse mode.

As a mouse, the Cordless Presenter (like other optical mice) proved equally deft on a desktop pad or pant leg; its longer, skinnier shape compared to most mice took a few minutes' getting used to (as did the scroll buttons' faint clicking or buzzing noise), but it glided and clicked without a hitch.

In presentation mode, the forward and back buttons never missed a beat, no matter how we wandered, gestured, or turned away from the PC running our PowerPoint shows. The laser pointer, triggered by a button on the unit's underside, produced a tiny but sharp red dot even at 20- to 30-foot distances.

Cost/Benefit Analysis

The minor flaw for one-handed use? While you can switch between mouse and presentation modes on the fly, anytime -- as when shifting from PowerPoint's editing/viewing to slide-show modes, or back to mouse control to navigate a Web page or switch to another presentation or program -- doing so takes a firm push of a very small, sticky slider switch on the bottom, millimeters from the laser trigger. It took considerable practice to master making the shift without accidentally hitting one of the main buttons or firing a laser burst, or muttering, "Why not a rocker switch on the top instead of a slider on the bottom?"

The slider also serves to turn the device off -- a nuisance, since most cordless mice don't need to be switched off overnight, but an important way to stretch the 60 to 100 hours of rated battery life (another LED gives several hours' warning before the AAs run dry). Blame it on Bluetooth, which uses more power than the 27MHz radio technology of most cordless mice and keyboards.

Praise Bluetooth, too, for providing much longer range and virtually no missed or skipped button presses compared to those wireless gadgets' -- and it's this excellent performance that you're meant to keep in mind when comparing the Cordless Presenter's $200 price to buying, say, both Logitech's Cordless Optical Mouse and a decent laser pointer for $80.

We appreciate the value of zero-glitch operation when a big sales pitch is on the line, and we like the idea of fewer peripherals to pack in a briefcase. That said, we're still balking: Logitech's multipurpose pointer is a neat idea, but only elite presentation mavens can justify its cost.

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