Logitech VX Revolution: Scrolls Like Butter

Posted by Alec Feld on 05/11/07 in Hardware

VX Revolution With my MX1000 crapping out, I went searching for the perfect new mouse. The Microsoft mice didn’t appeal to me, and neither did the Razer mice. The Mighty Mouse was out of the question, and I wanted something nice and clean cut, yet portable. I finally found that when I got my hands on a VX Revolution from Logitech, the portable little brother to the MX Revolution. Recognized and known for it’s advanced scroll and laser technology, the VX Revolution is a great mouse for any notebook or portable owner.

The first thing I noticed and played with was the VX’s scroll wheel. The wheel can be set to two different modes. The first mode puts the scroll wheel in a typical, normal state where the wheel ‘clicks’ as you scroll. The second mode, which the family of mice is known for, is the ‘free scroll’ mode, where the scroll wheel continuously spins until it slows down. This is great for scrolling long documents, webpages, and folders. The VX also ships with side scrolling, which is useful for horizontal pages and documents.

The second thing I noticed was the portability. The USB dongle that it ships with is incredibly small, and slips right into the mouse itself when not in use. This powers the mouse off as well, automatically conserving power and energy. To retrieve the dongle, hit the eject button on the bottom of the mouse, and the dongle pops right out. This also means that if one wanted to put this mouse in their bag, no extra parts are needed.

VX Revolution

The actual hardware was fantastic, but the software was a bit different. After installing Logitech Control Center and figuring out why it wouldn’t recognize my mouse, I finally had everything set up. The drivers are great and allow complete control over everything the mouse does. However, after a few weeks, I had some problems. When I plugged in the USB dongle my computer froze, and I started getting numerous kernel panics, eventually forcing my computer to not boot. With all of these problems centered around the drivers, I am now using the mouse driverless until a newer, more stable version of LCC is released.

Overall, an awesome product. The VX Revolution is ultra-portable yet comfortable and sleek at the same time. The free scrolling makes scrolling through long documents and pages easier, and the laser allows it to be used on any surface with amazing accuracy. The Logitech VX Revolution retails for $79.99.

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25 Comment(s)

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FranÃ§ois Meehan said on

May 11th, 2007 at 5:33 pm

Got the VX for my MacBook pro. It is almost perfect…

A big issue I have with it, if I leave my Macbook idle for a while, when coming back, the mouse cursor will move but can’t click on anything, the cpu(s) usage gets very high (the logitech control center daemon is taking the resources), this lasts for 30 seconds or so, then everything is back to normal.

If I kill that daemon the problem disappear, but the mouse lose his functionalities…

FranÃ§ois

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svolix said on

May 11th, 2007 at 5:56 pm

Francois, I got that to go away by uninstalling LCC and using SteerMouse instead.

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Toine said on

May 11th, 2007 at 8:24 pm

I liked the setup of macapper until now, the concept seems good let mac enthousiast kids write about mac apps, I scroll through the site to see which apps are being mentioned. However I think the site is starting to suffer from 2 things. Lack of focus (I don’t care about mice or other hardware)….I’m interested in the freeware, shareware or commercial software being mentioned….the second part is most posts aren’t exactly very critical (I know you’re trying to become friends with all those nice developers out there so you can keep giving away free licenses) but it doesn’t really critically compare the features or write if something is a crappy app, if it clearly is.

Tim said on

May 11th, 2007 at 9:02 pm

Same here. I really dig this mouse, but the software is barely usable. Several Kernel-panics, so that I now have to use the mouse driverless. Believe it or not, Logitech doesn’t even bother. I wrote to the support several times, but their only answer was “repair the drive’s rights”.

Well that doesn’t help me much. So, we’ll have to wait then.

Tim said on

May 11th, 2007 at 9:06 pm

@Francois: I just noticed that Logitech has posted a new version of the LCC (2.1.4) don’t know if that helps the mouse-stuck and kernel-panic thing!

FranÃ§ois Meehan said on

May 11th, 2007 at 9:43 pm

Hi Tim, did install LCC 2.1.4, problem is still there… The good news is that version come with the uninstaller, so I will try Steermouse as svolix suggested…

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Tyler Hawkins said on

May 11th, 2007 at 11:27 pm

@ Toine,
Thanks lots for the feedback, I know I’ll keep it in mind in future posts.

Cory OBrien said on

May 12th, 2007 at 1:29 am

I have the same problem as FranÃ§ois. Hopefully SteerMouse will fix this fatal flaw in an otherwise wonderful mouse.

DeathtoToasters said on

May 12th, 2007 at 1:57 am

I actually got this mouse today also. I was so happy when I just plugged it in and it worked. My MBP recognized it right away.

I have not even bothered to install the Logitech software, and after reading these comments I won’t bother.

Barry said on

May 12th, 2007 at 2:18 am

Mouses, not mice.

-2

Sebastien said on

May 12th, 2007 at 7:19 am

As far as I’m concerned, I’m extremely disappointed by this mouse. I already had an MX1000 on which I liked to have copy/paste/delete configured on my buttons, and the fact that the mouse is quite heavy. As for my MX Revolution, it’s too lightweight, the side wheel if just useless, the scroll wheel is just a gadget and it misses programmable buttons. What’s even worse, the control center for MacOSX is just a shame. I think I’m going to sell it back and get my MX1000 back on my desk.

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Bruce Anderson said on

May 12th, 2007 at 5:32 pm

@Barry: how do you figure? Mice is the plural of mouse. There’s no reason to use mouses just because one is an animal and the other is an input device.

FranÃ§ois Meehan said on

May 12th, 2007 at 5:38 pm

This thread is getting very interesting

Got Steermouse installed. This is very cool. Have one problem when changing my keyboard layout, keys with accents (French)confuses Steermouse.

But it is nice to get a responsive mouse once again, too bad Logitech doesn’t care.

Thanks guys for the advices.

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Techslacker said on

May 12th, 2007 at 10:34 pm

This is the first I had heard that the dongle plugged into the mouse itself when not in use. I love the idea of that. That one feature might be enough to sway me to try one out. The price is a killer though but of course I was considering an MS Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000. Not thrilled about it’s price either but I like the fact it’s bluetooth.

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muaddib420 said on

May 13th, 2007 at 1:00 am

i’m currently using a mighty mouse, and i’ve gotten kind of used to it. but it is by no means easy to use or ergonomic. i was thinking of getting this mouse, but i actually like the programmable buttons on the sides of my MX700 on my windows game box. do these work without the buggy logitech drivers installed?

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Koperak said on

May 13th, 2007 at 3:14 pm

This mouse is useless to mac user, switcher from mighty - no middle button (I know can “simulate”), driver software is completely useless. And it costs too much, for me.

-1

Matthew said on

May 14th, 2007 at 9:54 am

@Koperak, get a clue. I’ve had the VX for months on my iMac and love it. What the hell are you talking about, “no middle button”? I use the middle button as much as anything — if I can’t middle-click the wheel to open a new tab in FireFox, I get upset. It doesn’t “simulate”, it has an actual middle click on the wheel like every other mouse out there.

Simple solution to the crappy Logitech software: don’t use it. I use Steermouse, which gives me a lot of flexibility.

And as for the price, if you know how to bargain-hunt at all you can find a perfectly reasonable price on it. You get what you pay for — the frictionless scroll is priceless.

alej744 said on

May 14th, 2007 at 9:10 pm

Wow ALEC, this is MacAPPer. Not MacMICEr.

Alec Feld said on

May 15th, 2007 at 1:12 am

Wow ALEJ, I’ll just make things CAPS for no REASON. We’ve been mixing hardware stories in with app reviews on occasion and they have proven to be our most popular articles. Â I guess this thread is another example. As you can see, my main focus seems to be on how LCC is a load of crap, and it should be pretty easy to grasp that main focus.

alej744 said on

May 15th, 2007 at 11:58 pm

Then you should review SteerMouse.

Harish Mallipeddi said on

May 16th, 2007 at 11:41 am

I have a Logitech MX518 and I recently bought a MacBook. Now I can’t use all those extra buttons it has (especially miss the Back/Forward buttons while browsing). I tried looking for drivers for OS X at the Logitech website but couldn’t find anything for this model.

Anyone knows how to get those buttons working maybe in a more hackish manner? I actually got the buttons working by tweaking xorg.conf in Ubuntu.

Matthew Treder said on

May 16th, 2007 at 7:25 pm

Techslacker: Note that the dongle only plugs into the VX model. For the larger MX Revolution mouse, you’ll just have to carry it with you.

The free-spinning flywheel is just terrific. After a few days with it, it’s painful to go back to anything else, including the Mighty Mouse. With the MX, just pushing on the wheel switches between ratchet-click and free spinning…very cool.

I have had numerous Logitech Control Center issues with both the MX and VX mouse. With the most current LCC release (2.1.4), things seem to be better . . . but I have seen enough weirdness to wonder about Logitech’s commitment to the Mac. It’s good to see there are alternative drivers like SteerMouse out there. I will definitely try them.

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Timmy said on

May 18th, 2007 at 4:20 am

I use USB Overdrive with the VX Revolution and it seems to work pretty well. Only thing that doesn’t work is the zoom slider.

http://www.usboverdrive.com/

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Maccer said on

May 21st, 2007 at 7:47 pm

I currently have a Logitech MX500 that I use with the built-in OS X drivers. I’m thinking of buying the VX Revolution, but the zoom slider is one of the functions that I would really like to use. Does the zoom slider work with SteerMouse?

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MB-switcher said on

September 11th, 2007 at 2:37 pm

Yep…Logitech hardware is great and if you are a PC user drivers are excellent also but the Mac support is just awful. The LCC installs the ape framework in the background also (ape framework gets mixed reviews on the internet) so I was happy when I discovered Steermouse and if anybody is interested I have a review on my blog.

MB-switcher

fe1d53745c58 said on

May 9th, 2008 at 9:08 am

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