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The last time I talked about PC mice, I talked about the Microsoft Cordless Laser Mouse 5000. Since then, that mouse was returned to Bestbuy and exchanged for the sleek, and sexy Logitech MX Revolution. I’ve always been a big fan of Logitech Mice and figured that I would have no disappointments with the MX Revolution. Figured it would be well worth the adding the additional $30 bucks or so.

The Logitech MX Revolution is a cordless mouse, the latest in the very good line of cordless laser mice from Logitech. The wireless transmitter this time around came in the form of a small USB stick. Also included with the mouse was a docking station that plugs into the wall that is used to charge the mouse. As far as buttons, this mouse has plenty. There’s the usually left, right, forward, back and scroll wheel, but there is also a second scroll wheel right where your thumb would rest and a search button.

One of the neat features of this mouse is the mechanical scroll wheel. There are different ways to set it up but the theory is that it will automatically switch the scroll wheel from the normal click to click scrolling, to a complete free scroll depending on what you are trying to do.

Currently I own the Logitech MX 1000 cordless laser mouse and as far as usability, that mouse works really well. This new offering from Logitech is no different. The buttons feel really nice and it fits in my hand like it was meant to be there. The software that comes with the mouse enables just about all of the buttons to be used for different things. For example on my Vista machine, the second scroll wheel when activated will do that cool looking desktop application scroll thing that is new for Vista (which I hardly ever use).

Another thing I really liked "on paper" was the idea of the search button. You highlight a word on the page, click the search button and it will automatically open our browser to Google or Yahoo (or whatever search engine you specify) with the search results for the word you highlighted. Like I said, it sounds good on paper. In reality, it seems like it was a little buggy. If I was using IE, it worked like a charm, but if I was using Firefox it would open a Firefox window and an IE window with the search results. Annoying but even if that was fixed, I don’t think I would’ve used it much anyway. It is one of those features that I would have to consciously make an effort to get in the habit of using.

I really don’t know why the Mechanical scroll wheel was added to this mouse except to add a bullet point on the box. How it works, if you do a slow controlled scroll, the wheel moves with the click to click motion, works well when your scrolling down the page of a blog or something while reading. Then if you get a little more aggressive with the wheel, it will completely let go and you can free spin the wheel to get to the bottom of the page in a hurry. I tried it out for a few minutes and quickly went into the settings to switch it to work like a regular scroll wheel / middle button. I can’t say that the mechanical feature didn’t feel cool when I did use it. You can feel the mouse lock into click to click, and unlock to free spin. Made the $89 bucks I spent on the mouse feel a little more valid.

I said this in the Microsoft Mouse review, I use the middle button a lot. So with this mouse I also tried to use it like I was accustomed to using the middle mouse button. But for some reason, the middle mouse button just didn’t do anything when I used IE7. Worked perfectly in Firefox.

Another thing that was nice but made me really cautious was the USB transmitter, like I said it is really small…which is a plus, but its so small that It seems like it would easily get lost.

I really liked the Logitech MX Revolution. It is just a really nice comfortable mouse, which works pretty well. The main problem I had with the mouse is the middle mouse button when using IE7 but Im pretty sure that there is probably going to be a fix for that (if there isn’t one already). I would definitely recommend this mouse to anyone (except left handers) but if you already own an earlier Logitech cordless laser mouse, you might not find enough of anything different to spend that almost $100 bucks. I plan on taking it back (Bestbuy is going to hate me) and continue using the Logitech mouse I already own.