Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 Review

A Shark With a Laser Beam Attached To Its Head

Everybody talks about Intel versus AMD or Nvidia versus ATI, but what could be the fiercest rivalry in PC hardware involves Microsoft and Logitech's battle for your mouse pad.

Microsoft introduces the optical mouse; Logitech is first to make one cordless. Microsoft pioneers a tilting scroll wheel for horizontal as well as vertical scrolling; Logitech sees that and raises with an ultra-precise, invisible laser instead of a red LED optical sensor. It's like Schick and Gillette's game of leapfrog to see who can put more blades on a razor.

Now Microsoft says it's regained rodent supremacy with the Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 -- featuring not only a laser, but a High Definition Laser with Intelligent Tracking System. That translates to 1,000 dpi resolution that's hard to beat for use in tight spaces (less than half an inch to travel from top to bottom of our XGA display), plus a capture rate of 6,000 frames per second to improve a laser mouse's already impressive ability to work on different surfaces. (Like Logitech's, Microsoft's laser is much too low-powered to cause worry about eye damage.)

Microsoft's engineers have also responded to Logitech's Tilt Wheel Plus Zoom, adding a Magnifier tool that (like the downloadable Windows XP Taskbar Magnifier) lets you move a virtual magnifying glass or zoom window around the screen. Finally, though it isn't cheap, Redmond's new desktop flagship isn't outrageously priced -- it's $65.

A Short-Range All-Terrain Vehicle

The silver-finished, right-hand-drive Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 comes with two AA alkaline batteries, which Microsoft boasts can last for six months or more -- twice the claim of the $60 Logitech MX610 we tested a couple of weeks ago. Instead of its rival's thumb-sized, USB-plug 2.4GHz radio receiver, the 6000 matches earlier Microsoft wireless gear in using a mouse-sized receiver with a USB cord.

The mouse and receiver get up and running with no laborious button-pushing or frequency-synchronizing, but the receiver's performance was our biggest gripe about the 6000: You're supposed to place it no more than six feet from the mouse, versus Logitech's admittedly more theoretical than practical range of 30 feet, while keeping it away from sources of electromagnetic interference such as your monitor.

Plugged into the same PC on the same cluttered desk, the Microsoft mouse was noticeably more sensitive to interference or poor receiver placement than the Logitech. We tried the receiver in several places beside or on top of the minitower PC or dangling below the desktop, at first getting no response to mouse movements and then satisfactory pointer movement but hit-and-miss response to left or right button clicks. (Vigorous clicking, pressing harder and further back on the buttons than usual, helped.)

Once we finally found a good spot for the receiver, both mouse moves and button presses worked without a hitch and our enjoyment increased tenfold. The 6000 refused to skip or skew even when we chose the pencil tool and flailed back and forth as fast as we could in Windows Paint -- one up on the LX610, which skidded once or twice in the same test.

As far as working on different surfaces, Microsoft's not exaggerating: The only two that stumped the 6000 were clear glass and glossy photo paper. Other surfaces, from mouse pad to bare desk to keyboard to cubicle wall to magazine to pants leg to shirtfront to the top of our head, didn't affect the mouse's tracking (although it certainly disoriented us in terms of which way was up).

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