Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 Review

Slightly Slippery Scrolling

In addition to left and right buttons and a clickable scroll wheel, the Wireless Laser Mouse has two buttons above its sculpted, left-side thumb scoop -- which, like the index- and middle-finger troughs on top, proved exceptionally comfortable to hold from our first minute, without the minor adjustments or finger shifts that usually accompany initial use of a new mouse.

Clicking the scroll wheel, by default, moves through open applications or windows as Alt-Tab does from the keyboard. The default setting for the larger and easier-to-reach thumb button is Back, to retrace your steps through Web pages.

The smaller, more forward-mounted thumb button activates the Magnifier -- a window pane that you can drag around the screen for a close-up view of part of an image, a few cells in a spreadsheet, or whatever. Holding down the Magnifier button while moving the mouse lets you adjust the size of the window, while holding the button while scrolling forward and backward lets you switch among five levels of zoom. (Microsoft cautions that the Magnifier is incompatible with media players, OpenGL, or full-screen Direct3D applications.)

The feature works nicely, but moving your thumb from the scoop to hold the button while moving the scroll wheel felt pretty awkward -- we repeatedly lost our grip or lurched from the smallest to largest magnification level, overshooting the in-between zoom we wanted. Part of the problem was that, as we've grumbled in earlier reviews, Microsoft's Tilt Wheel's smooth vertical scrolling feels less precise or looser than the minute clicks or detents you're probably used to for moving just one row up or down in a worksheet or three lines up or down in a word processing document.

Also, while the Tilt Wheel offers swift horizontal panning across your widest worksheet or image, Microsoft's IntelliPoint 5.4 driver doesn't let you override it or assign different functions to a left or right tilt as Logitech's SetPoint does. That's hardly a huge demerit, but when we were using the MX610 we got hooked on reassigning a right and left nudge of the scroll wheel to be the most convenient, efficient Forward and Back we've ever browsed with.

In This Competition, You Win

Otherwise, both the 6000 and its software are versatile performers. You can not only change the five button functions from their defaults to launch various programs or Web sites or execute common functions such as Copy or Paste, but specify different button setups in different applications. (In Internet Explorer, for example, we moved the zoom function to the easier-to-hold-while-scrolling Back button, while moving Back to a wheel-click.)

And our brief mention before didn't give enough credit to the mouse's ergonomics: With its top troughs and thumb scoop cradling the hand, the Wireless Laser is just about the most comfortable mouse we've ever held.

Now that we've tested both of the mouse superpowers' latest entries, we'll give Microsoft's model 6000 narrow victories for comfort, speed, and simplicity (the MX610's ten buttons can be daunting). Against that, the $60 Logitech offers better wireless reception, more precise scrolling, and more programmability. If pressed, the electromagnetic-interference stumble means we'd score this round maybe 54–46 for Logitech, but frankly we'll give an enthusiastic thumbs up to both. We can't wait to see how the rivals'll top themselves next year.