Logitech V500 Cordless Notebook Mouse and Microsoft Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse Reviews

Which Is the Ultimate Portable Pointer?

The sailors of South Pacific sing, "There Is Nothing Like a Dame," but lots of laptop PC users will tell you there's nothing like a mouse: Some hate touchpads, some hate pointing sticks, but many notebook owners prefer the buttons, scroll wheel, and general feel of a real mouse to any substitute cursor controller.

That's why mouse manufacturers, led by Microsoft and Logitech, offer specialized travel mice, shrunk to fit alongside a notebook in an attaché case or on an airline tray table. And the rivals' newest models are their most clever and convenient yet.

Since nobody wants to bother with bundling a cord before tossing a mouse into a briefcase -- or untangling one from everything else in there -- both the Logitech V500 Cordless Notebook Mouse and Microsoft Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse use radio-frequency wireless technology instead of the traditional mouse tail. Since it's no fun to fish for a separate radio receiver in the bottom of your bag, both vendors let you stash the USB-plug receiver inside the mouse itself, which also turns off the device so as not to waste battery power when not in use.

Each takes a little getting used to in terms of size -- a bit under 4 inches long, while most desktop mice are close to 5 inches; users with big hands will find themselves either palming or covering the whole mouse, or guiding it with just their fingertips. But once you adjust, both are smooth performers, with optical instead of rolling-ball mechanical sensors to glide over hotel-room desktops or pants legs with no mouse pad needed. Unless you're a top-speed gamer, either would serve perfectly well as your only mouse for use both at the office and on the road.

But the duo are by no means identical: Microsoft's mobile mouse is neat, simple, and affordable, while Logitech's is more innovative, elite, and expensive.

Petite Point

Available in gray/black or blue and priced at $45 (though many online outlets list it for $5 or $10 less), Microsoft's Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse is a traditional three-button design -- left and right buttons flanking a clickable scroll wheel -- with a symmetrical shape for either left or right hands, helped by shallow scoops or troughs to cradle the index and middle fingers.

The wheel offers only vertical scrolling, without the horizontal movement (what Microsoft calls Tilt Wheel Technology) that the company's full-sized mice provide for wide spreadsheets or zoomed-in images.

In short, it's a three-quarter-sized match for any mainstream mouse, with up-to-date optical instead of scratchy, dust-collecting mechanical technology. As such, it worked fine on our test systems with no need to install the supplied IntelliPoint 5.2 software driver -- although we vote for doing so, because then you can reassign the wheel click to another function, such as a browser Back button, to offset the lack of the side-mounted extra buttons seen on deluxe desktop mice.

Indeed, as we missed in versions 5.0 and 5.1 but cheered in our review of Microsoft's Optical Desktop with Fingerprint Reader a couple of weeks ago, IntelliPoint 5.2 lets you assign a button to different tasks in different applications, such as Back in your browser but a double-click in Excel.

Pushing a button on the rodent's rump lets you remove the lid to insert or replace its single AA alkaline battery, which Microsoft says should last for three months. A tiny tripwire switches off the mouse when the not-quite-flush-fitting USB receiver is pressed into place.

The antenna end of the receiver swivels through 270 degrees to help you secure a good signal or avoid tangling with adjacent USB cables or flash-memory keys; we experienced a brief bit of electromagnetic interference or signal skipping with the receiver squeezed between the back of our desktop minitower and 19-inch CRT monitor, but a twist of the antenna fixed that.

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