Beef #2

I own a Logitech wingman force that still works great, and so do a lot of other people, however Logitech in its infinite wisdom and decided not to release any Vista or 7 Drivers for it especially 64 bit.

ENOUGH SAID… LOGITECH IS NOT WORTH INVESTING IN!

i found this page doing a search to figure out how to turn off the MSN notification that beeps endlessly all night whenever an email is received or someone logs on or off.

i did a search before i bought it, “mx5000 sucks” i think, didn’t find this page. Don’t think i would have bought it if i had.

If it weren’t for the highly annoying problems with this keyboard I would actually be quite happy with it. It has a nice functional layout. I have no problems seeing the little screen (and I enjoy checking the temperature to get a second opinion when I’m feeling hot or cold – I’ve learned that apparently my sensations have nothing to do with the actual temp in the room). My batteries last a good long time – and even after it gives me a critical battery warning the batteries will still work fine for another week or more of 10+ hour days. I also really like the side-scrolling feature on the mouse.

The bad:
1. The repeating characters lose their charm rather quickly. You have to be very attentive when entering data into spreadsheets, and I frequently have to go retreiving mistakenly deleted emails (provided I even noticed it happened). And when it decides to do the infinite-repeating trick I usually get up and take the keyboard for a walk across the office. Reading the post above where they got the infinite-repeat on the backspace character has me very nervous now – I’d never considered that possibility.

2. It has been only within the past couple of months that I have begun having frequent connectivity issues. I will be happily typing away and then suddenly no keyboard. Sometimes it will come back readily, other times it will take an hour to get it to come back again. Not cool when you’re in the middle of a thought process, or on a deadline. And sometimes in the morning when I start up my machine it will fail to connect then, and I will spend a very frustrating hour before I can get to work. Not a good way to start the day.

3. Although it’s very nice to be able to assign custom functions to the mouse and keyboard buttons, the software constantly dumps these preferences, so you never really know what you will get when you hit the buttons. I eventually just gave up on them.

4. The touch-controls on the left are easily triggered by a stray pinky swipe. I think these are customizable in the software, so you could disable them, but since the preferences are constantly dropped they would just come right back again.

5. The mouse does hold a pretty good charge – I can go for about 3 days before it’s dead – but typically I try to remember to put it on to charge each night. The problem is that the charger is very touchy about the exact position of the mouse for it to actually charge. At first I would just stick it in the cradle and be on my way, until I found my mouse was dead. Then I noticed that when I put it in the cradle I had to fidget with it – seating and re-seating the mouse, gently tapping it one direction or the other, wiggling the cradle about, and usually cursing at it after I’ve been at it for five minutes – otherwise it would not actually charge. I haven’t found any sure-fire way to get it to work, either by method of placement or MacGuyver-like rigging (and this is my specialty). I just have to futz with it for several minutes each night until I see the little charging lights start to do their dance.

In short, the time-robbing and anger-inducing properties of this keyboard and its software (and lesser-so the mouse) far outweigh the positive features. My experience has made me very leery of Logitech products.

I am about to install SetPoint 4.40 (which before I can install I have to install version 4.24 apparently), and I truly hope this will improve my experience. I do recall that installing SetPoint in the first place took a heck of a long time – like over an hour, so I’m not thrilled at the prospect of going through two more installs of it now (after the two required uninstalls first as well), but this device has already stolen so much of my time what’s another couple hours?
And if it doesn’t make a marked improvement then I will enjoy smashing this keyboard to bits with a nice heavy hammer.

Anyway I then recieved it, and didnt know what all the fuss was all about, it worked perfectly for about 5 months, I loved it, admitedly the OLED screen is pointless but hey its there so its cool. Anyway now I know what all the fuss is about. I have had the ” No connection” problem for about a month 6 or 7 times a day. I have put new batteries in, still the same. I am now extremly annoyed with it.

There needs to be a fix for this.

On the good side. I found battery consumption not as bad as everyone else is saying but then I use duracell and not rechargables.
Also when my dongle decided to stop working I got a free replacement in a week from logitec (not sure if thats a good or bad point?) Not good if it breaks again in a few months.

Basically. Forget about buying this product. And anything else bluetooth in my opinion. My wireless network adapters a peice of crap too.

The mouse is nicely designed, but not for gamers. Slow response because of the power saving function (turns off after maybe 10 seconds of no movement. Kinda useless for any sniping game). Buttons are nice, fits in the hand nicely. 5 out of 10.

I will definatly NOT be buying another logitech combo set. I hope some people got fired for producing this garbage.

Anyway, these are my niggles (which PLEASE need to be address, Logitech!)
1. it is a keyboard so you should be able to use it for gaming; it will only register a few keys at the same time so if you want to lean, walk, aim and strafe you are unlucky.

2. I actually purchased this mouse/keyboard combo to reduce my stress levels and increase my productivity because I spend anything up to 14 hours *a day* working on a PC doing IT consultancy and support.
What I actually get is increasingly frustrated; the fancy message window is great; get notification of IMs and emails, one button to open them and if they are spam they can be ignored. This is great when it works but when it doesn’t the keyboard locks up.
The only way to fix it is to disconnect the logitech bluetooth dongle, and plug it in again and then wait a few minutes for everything to start working again.
So much for increased productivity.
It also pisses off people who have an irate customer on the phone and are asking for advice because they think you are ignoring them during the interim when you cannot type…

3. if the keyboard is left alone for a while it goes into “sleep mode” to save the batteries – great; but your next keypress gets repeated so instead of typing “next” you type “nnext”.
Which is a pain in the bum when you are typing passwords all day; look up the password, type it in, fail (because you typed “password” and the keyboard did “ppassword”).
So you get to wait until you can log in again.
So much for increased productivity.

Plus points:
1. it is cordless and this works for me…
Initially my mouse and keyboard had alot of lag but I moved the Logitech dongle to the front of my PC (front USB port) and since have had only occassional problems.

2. great battery life; my mouse lasts, off a full charge, about 4 days.
It is easy to forget to plug into the charging dock of an evening so it gives you a few chances to remember.
The keyboard uses AA cells – I use rechargable NMh which last about a month – absolutely brilliant

3. convenience – when it all works it *can* increase productivity.

4. it is comfortable and well laid out.

So, there you go, the good and the bad; I am just keeping my fingers crossed for the above bugs to get resolved…

The mouse doesn’t lag and the batteries last around a week for the mouse and a month + of 8 hour office work for the keyboard (Ni-Mh 1300A rechargeables).

The annoying touch-sensitive controls on the left side can be disabled in the drivers (my hand was constantly hitting them) and the keyboard feel is just right for office work. The mouse is pretty comfortable to use too, and I say this a someone who normally doesn’t like large mouses.

LCD is handy and there’s no problem reading it even though I’m sitting under a florescent lamp (the temp reading is handy – 77F in the office now, bah :P ).