spherebox

For someone like me who uses the keyboard and mouse for nearly all of my waking hours, it’s probably pretty important to ensure the input devices I use are ergonomic. As I didn’t have a dedicated mouse at work and was using a Dell mouse (which was not even optical) taken from another machine, I thought it would be a good idea to get one which would be comfortable to use.

After checking the prices and availability of mice, I decided on the Logitech MX400 laser mouse. I would’ve gotten just a plain optical one like the MX5xx series, but apparently they’ve been phased out, so laser it is. Been using it for a couple of days, and here’s my assessment of it.

No complaints about the shape of the mouse. It was pretty much in the mould of the MX700 which I’ve been using with my desktop at home, albeit with a slightly more curvy design/look and a lot less lighter (MX700 had the weight of two AA batteries which made it really heavy). Besides that, the scroll wheel had a tilt function as well allowing scrolling horizontally on top of the traditional vertical scrolling. Sensitivity has gone up slightly from the standard optical, so I don’t have to bump up the sensitivity as high as previously. As usual, the Logitech’s bundled driver/utility allowed further customisation of the assigned tasks for each button (called SetPoint now instead of MouseWare).

Unfortunately, I did find some faults with it. :( Missing from the mouse were the scroll up/down and toggle button which I had some use of on the MX700. Next, I wasn’t quite sure why clicking the scroll wheel didn’t close the Firefox tabs which works on every other mouse I’ve used before. Setting the scroll wheel to function as a ‘middle mouse button’ in SetPoint doesn’t seem to fix it either. Not quite sure the reason for that behaviour. (Edit: refer to comments for fixes/workarounds, thanks to commenters! :))

Another odd thing about having SetPoint running is the presence of a helper executable as part of your processes which they’ve named ‘khalmnpr.exe’. I don’t know how they came about that name, but the first thing that came to my mind when I saw it running in my task managed was that it’s some spyware. They ought to have come up with a better name really..

That said, I’m quite happy with it thus far. I’m not going to be able to comment on its precision since I haven’t done any FPS gaming for a really long time and neither am I using the mouse for precise graphic editing. So if you’re looking for a comfortable, ergonomic mouse, Logitech’s MX400 is one you might want to consider.