@paulvdh - what @eelik said. I guess it was just the low quality mice I’ve owned before. I did go out and buy one the other day - a nicer one than I would normally buy for myself - and the scroll-wheel click is working quite well. With the cheaper mice I had, the wheel was too sensitive, even with the detents, and would often scroll a jump during the clicking motion.
I appreciate everybody’s feedback in here. The trackball suggestion is appreciated, too! It was worth looking into, and maybe I’ll use one in the future. For now, I ended up going with a higher-end Logitech (MX Master 2S), and so far it’s working quite well.
I use a trackpad and a mouse. Trackpad on left hand and logitech mk705 on my right. I dont use middle button functions; scroll wheel just for scrolling. Being able to pan and zoom with the trackpad is great. Additionally, if my right hand get tired of all the clicking, i can do that on the trackpad also.
I have learned long ago that low quality mice reduce productivity.
I also refuse to buy an EUR80 mouse though, mainly because if you have any experience with those things you can simply see those EUR 80 mice also cost < EUR 5 to make.
If you are willing to put a bit of time into it, you can find pretty decent mice for around EUR20, but I usually buy 2nd hand mice at flea markets. I always have 3 or 4 lying around. Often you have to repair them. The wires in the tail always break at the spot it bends a lot, which is just at the exit of the mouse, so every 2 years or so you have to make it’s tail a few cm shorter.
I loved my logitech MX Master, and the only reason I changed, was logitech came out with MX master 2S. Can’t imagine switching unless they come out with 3S
Lots of button, a proper size, adaptive scrolling and Bluetooth.
Let me pitch in with a recommendation: Logitech MX Master. It’s wireless (supports both bluetooth and their dongle), switchable between multiple computers, has good ergonomics and several buttons that you can map to various functions. The scroll wheel is software-switchable to be either clicky or not. And there is another middle button if you hate using the scroll wheel as a button too (I do).
And honestly, I don’t understand the concerns about price. If it’s a tool that you use several hours per day, it’s one of the most important things in your life. Why try to save what amounts to a dinner or two? Take the cost amortized over 2 years and divide it by months to see how much this costs your per month: is it really that much? I learned not to try to save money on keyboards, mice and monitors.
As long as you consider also the development costs and include the fact that things produced in lower quantities do not really benefit from economy of scale. Meaning specialized tools that cost a lot to develop and are not sold to many people are simply more expensive. (Not really an issue for gaming mice but definitely for specialized CAD mice.)
Such kind of things are hard to weigh.
How about EUR 10 for a short sata cable in a local computer shop? (Such a red one).
I left the shop angry and without a cable.
Careful, I used some of those in a computer some years ago… they must have had some chemicals in them as after 2 years of ‘use’ stuff stopped working properly and unplugging them revealed corrosion happening.
Naturally the ones from the computer shop can be from the same source…
Overall prices in brick & mortar stores need to include sales staff, rent for the store, etc…
A national box store that has a website and distributes via parcel service is more efficient and thus cheaper.
China subsidizing parcel services for distributors within its borders to sell worldwide and even beating national box stores is a temporary thing.
All that being said, most of the stuff I need I only can afford from China as well, so…
Back on topic.
I use a Logitech MX Anywhere 2S for the last couple months.
And funnily enough the price in a big chain store locally matched the price of online stores, sans the shipping, so that’s where I got it (AU $70).
The Logitech mouse I had before that died after years of use from hand sweat interacting with the rubber inlays, that made them brittle/come off in layers… I repaired the micro switches once on that one.
The computers I have to take care off, mouse always go bad on the micro switches after 2-3 years.
And not necessarily the left button, the right button goes wanky first too, although its less used.
Mouse mats is another area altogether.
There are the ones for gamers made from some rubber and textile on top… but I don’t like them. Too thick. Too much stuff gets trapped in the surface.
The ones I prefer are just 2-3 mm thick and have a fine textured plastic surface, but the problem with most of them are that they seem to react with sweat/skingrease(?) and deform over time (4-6 months) and you loose that flat space to push the mouse around on.
And price wise? Don’t get me started… a piece of some material the size of an A5/A4 sheet costing as much as a mouse is rather questionable, esp when there is no guarantee that it lasts for a couple of years.
Just NO!
Wireless mice work just fine, even over just USB2.
I even use a wireless keyboard as well, and it might not be as fast as gaming wired keyboards, but I’d I have to some serious testing to know for certain.
ON EDIT: Should have included the smilies to indicate dripping sarcasm.
I VEHEMENTLY DISLIKE mouse without tails. First they constantly get lost on my desk, an second, the interval between changing batteries is shorter than the interval of the wires breaking, which makes them less reliable.
With keyboards it’s even worse. I do not want my neighbours listening in on what I typ eon my keyboard. and a piece of wire is a much simpler then trying to find out if a keyboard has enough encryption in it’s RF protocol that I’d even dare to trust it.
I love my trackball, the Logitech M570. However, in KiCad using the middle button (pushing down on the scroll wheel) is a bit hard. Is there a way to assign the middle button function to the two extra buttons on that trackball (forward/back buttons)?
Yeah, it reminded me of a friend that I know that enjoyed the feeling of the ball spinning around in one of the early MicroSoft mice. And they were also constantly complaining about having to clean the surface and the inside of the mouse; all the while knowing that I had upgraded to one of the early optical mice and had neither issue.
Some people just really resist change to the extremes.
Now we get to the heart of the issue! …you lose mice that don’t have anchors.
Serious gaming mice by Logitech, used to (may still) have the ability to connect the charge cable and use it without ever having to change the battery. Remembering to plug the mouse in at night, and using it all day, never required me to use the mouse with the charge cord connected.
If certain government agencies want to know what you are typing they very likely will be able to detect it on your commercial wired keyboard.
And if you take security seriously, NEVER have any cell phone inside the same room.
Your middle trackball button would also be hard to use in other programs.
Have you considered just putting an extra switch on your trackball and wiring it in parallel to the existing switch?
Check for a driver/preferences package for your trackball and OS. There is often a way to remap the buttons in the preferences program specific to the input device. I just checked Logitech’s product page for that trackball (not my style, I don’t care for the thumb controlled trackballs, probably because I learned with the finger controlled styles) and there is software for remapping buttons at the OS level for Winblows and MacOS. See here:
If you are on Lunux, I didn’t see any mention of software support from Logitech.
It was worth looking into, and maybe I’ll use one in the future. For now, I ended up going with a higher-end Logitech (MX Master 2S), and so far it’s working quite well.
…you lose mice that don’t have anchors.