Is there a reason why so many wireless mice continue to require dongles? Is there some advantage to that setup vs. Bluetooth? Even if there was some performance advantage I'm not sure I'd care, because I really do want to avoid using up a USB port (though I am impressed with how small the dongles have gotten), but I was curious.
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Bluetooth Mouse guide for Mac OS X
- Thread starter fstfrwrd
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Well you can get the MX 5500 Keyboard/mouse set. It includes a BLUETOOTH MX REVOLUTION. This is currently the only way you can get this mouse. THe price is steep though, $150. I'm thinking about getting it and then selling the keyboard for a good price. The MX Revolution is the best mouse ever, but the usb dongle stinks!
I use the Logitech V470, a white "Mac" version. No lag but I find that reconnecting after sleep is not instantaneous and can take up to a minute. The Logitech drivers give useful information about battery life, since the inbuilt bluetooth drivers only seem to care about Apple peripherals.
I just bought a spare mouse, the Microsoft 5000 bluetooth for just under £13 ($19) from Play.com.
a) Cost. Bluetooth is a little more expensive to implement than RF.
b) Battery life is better with RF mice
c) You cannot use BT peripherals on startup (e.g. to troubleshoot boot failures), unless your bios/EFI/whatever supports it. Virtually all support usb.
d) For gamers, RF mice tend to be a little less laggy.
I just bought a spare mouse, the Microsoft 5000 bluetooth for just under £13 ($19) from Play.com.
a) Cost. Bluetooth is a little more expensive to implement than RF.
b) Battery life is better with RF mice
c) You cannot use BT peripherals on startup (e.g. to troubleshoot boot failures), unless your bios/EFI/whatever supports it. Virtually all support usb.
d) For gamers, RF mice tend to be a little less laggy.
Not to mention that whenever you lose the RF dongle, you have to buy a new mouse. Win for mouse manufacturers!
Of course, when the RF dongle snags on something and breaks your USB port in the process, well, sucks to be you.
Eh, I've found the battery life on Bluetooth and RF mice to be about the same. I've had Bluetooth mice with good and poor battery life, I've had RF mice with good and poor battery life.
Fair enough. Not a problem for us Mac folks, but it is a problem on the PC side.
Is this actually the case, or is this just gamer-perception? I've never had problems with perceptible latency in either Bluetooth or RF mice. I have had problems with interference with both (2.4GHz, the wireless dumping ground...), but it seems that the real solution there is just to use a wired mouse. Plus that solves all the other problems.
The more I try to find a bluetooth mouse I like, the more I think I'm going to go back to a wired one for the time being. Manufacturers seem to be sold on rf with dongles rather than bluetooth and many of the mice, even with batteries in them just feel light and overly-plasticky. The feel & weight of a wireless mighty mouse is one thing that Apple definitely got right. Unfortunately with the scroll ball issues and a lack of programmable buttons, I'm trying to find a replacement.
Does anyone know if there's a BT mouse that has it's own battery that can be charged through USB and be used as a wired mouse?
Any reason no one's come out with one that has a Li-Ion battery that can be recharged like an iPod while still being used?
I currently have a BT MM and I use rechargable batteries, but would love to be able to charge the batteries through USB, and to be able to use it as a wired mouse while the battery charges would be great. I believe I saw this feature on some RF mouse, Logitech possibly but I could be wrong, I'll look around and see if I can find it.
I'm sure since Apple is dropping white plastic when they redesign the mini they'll throw in new keyboards (black keys) and new mice (that will probably have a feature like that).
I would also like to see that feature in the BT keyboard as well, since there can some problem when troubleshooting and using a BT keyboard the function to use it as a wired keyboard as well would be great, if Apple came out with a mouse/keyboard set with that ability I would buy it instantly
Be good if someone invented a usb dongle with a usb port on it, like the old parallel printer dongles, that way it wouldn't take up a usb port.
thanks for this guide. I recently bought a 1.83ghz mac mini C2D off of craigslist and need to get a mouse and keyboard. I'm buying the older M9270LL/A off a friend of mine (fortunately, seems that this older version is the preferred version by at least a few people - as per this Non-aluminum wireless keyboard thread and this MBP Mouse and Keyboard.. thread).
now I need the mouse which would be nice if it matched w/ my Mac Mini and my M9270LL/A keyboard, but at the same time, I'll be using a Dell 2408WFP monitor so I guess it'd be ok if it didn't match.
However, after reading this thread, seems that it's a bit shaky to own and use a bluetooth mouse. I think I may go the wired route instead.
I had first heard about the Logitech V470 in the Need a decent bluetooth keyboard/mouse for macbook! thread, but from the comments by Beric on the drivers that needed to be uninstalled, I'm a little hesitant. Also weckart's comment on the connection not being instantaneous.
dwd3885's comment on the BLUETOOTH MX REVOLUTION sounds promising, but I don't want to have to buy the whole MX 5500 Keyboard/mouse set for $150.
over in this post, brings up the Rocketfish Wireless Multimedia Bluetooth Keyboard and Laser Mouse - Black/Silver/Red, but again, seems you have to buy the whole set (which is $99), but again, same situation - I just want to get the mouse if that's what I need.
Any thoughts?
now I need the mouse which would be nice if it matched w/ my Mac Mini and my M9270LL/A keyboard, but at the same time, I'll be using a Dell 2408WFP monitor so I guess it'd be ok if it didn't match.
However, after reading this thread, seems that it's a bit shaky to own and use a bluetooth mouse. I think I may go the wired route instead.
I had first heard about the Logitech V470 in the Need a decent bluetooth keyboard/mouse for macbook! thread, but from the comments by Beric on the drivers that needed to be uninstalled, I'm a little hesitant. Also weckart's comment on the connection not being instantaneous.
dwd3885's comment on the BLUETOOTH MX REVOLUTION sounds promising, but I don't want to have to buy the whole MX 5500 Keyboard/mouse set for $150.
over in this post, brings up the Rocketfish Wireless Multimedia Bluetooth Keyboard and Laser Mouse - Black/Silver/Red, but again, seems you have to buy the whole set (which is $99), but again, same situation - I just want to get the mouse if that's what I need.
Any thoughts?
I am new to the Mac world for about two months now and been looking for a good BT mouse. To answer your question RadTeach (www.radtech.com) has a line of BT that you can plug via USB to charge in case your mouse needs some juice. The reviews seem good and appear to be sturdy. I am still between the RadTech BT500/BT600 and the RocketFish BT. Still not sure, but would like to figure something out soon.
I know Apple says to use a USB keyboard/mouse for troubleshooting, but I've got a Logitech V270 (reviewed a bit further down) that I'm sure can be used even in the boot selection screen (ie. when you hold option when booting up).. it works at the Login screen anyhow..
Yea I've been wondering why no one's done that yet.. it's one thing for the RF receiver to be small (and the Logitech ones are tiny!) but they're still taking up a USB port.. On laptops (especially Apple's, unfortunately) that's a big setback.. I'm guessing the components needed to embed a USB hub in a receiver would make it impractically big..
Now.. the Logitech V270.. it's old (predecessor of the V470, I think), but quite good. I use spent batteries from remote control cars on it and they still last months~ I've only owned this one bluetooth mouse so I can't say much, but apparently the V270 is a little slow on the re-connection scene. It also has a little trouble with reflective surfaces. But for me it works quite well, since I'm usually at a table when using the laptop anyway. I only wish it had side scrolling abilities.. Guess I'll wait until I upgrade!
Has anyone used the V270 before and can suggest a good "next-model" (with side scrolling)? The V470 would be the logical (no pun intended
) step, but how about the Microsoft ones? I hear they're quite good too And yes.. does any mice work with the battery meter in the prefs? I'd imagine it's just a matter of hacking drivers but I'm no expert
...I have a v470 and it works very well with my iMac and eeePC1000H but the problem I have with it is on the iMac the tilt wheel doesn't have an option for page forward/backward and it works fine on winXP (firefox and safari)...
I just got the Kensington Slimblade trackball mouse and it's a nice design mouse however there's 2 things I don't like about it.
1. The trackball makes this little electronic sound every time you rotate the ball and it gets a bit annoying when you use the ball a lot.
2. You can't click on the ball like a button as like regular scroll wheels can.
EDIT:
This mouse just sucks. After only a few hours of use the trackballs goes out on it completely and becomes un-responsive. This is going back to them and I want a refund. The people also over there at Kensington also don't know how to re-ply to e-mails as well.
1. The trackball makes this little electronic sound every time you rotate the ball and it gets a bit annoying when you use the ball a lot.
2. You can't click on the ball like a button as like regular scroll wheels can.
EDIT:
This mouse just sucks. After only a few hours of use the trackballs goes out on it completely and becomes un-responsive. This is going back to them and I want a refund. The people also over there at Kensington also don't know how to re-ply to e-mails as well.
Hi guys,
I have been using the Microsoft Notebook Optical Mouse 3000 for a while now on both my iMac and Macbook Pro and can confirm to you it works a a joy
in both Leopard and Vista or XP ( if like me you use all 3 of them)
This thread is about bluetooth mice....why would you throw in info about a "wired" mouse here?
Yea, it looks really nice in shops.. nice rich blue.. too bad I can't justify buying it when my V270 still works well.. side-scrolling is useful, but not enough to justify spending NZ$100 on it..
Anyone use Microsoft's bluetooth mice? Please post some review on those!
Its too bad nobody out there makes an aluminum mouse yet. I just love the cold feeling of it, not to mention to looks.
Hello everyone. I own a microsoft notebook mouse 5000 which used to work flawlessly back in time when I had my white MB. Now that I have a uMBP, it doesn't want to connect anymore. I was able to do it the first time. Then the uMBP went to sleep and the other day, I wasn't able to connect. The mouse is not in the list and I have to clic on the bottom buttom to pair it with the uMBP. Then I get an error saying unable to pair!
I've tried many situations where I open the computer before the mouse and vice versa, nothing worked.
I'm about to throw this crap in the garbage. Will the logitech v470 do the same? These damn uMBP's only have 2 usb port and like many other users, we need them and that is why we want to keep a BT mouse!
I've tried many situations where I open the computer before the mouse and vice versa, nothing worked.
I'm about to throw this crap in the garbage. Will the logitech v470 do the same? These damn uMBP's only have 2 usb port and like many other users, we need them and that is why we want to keep a BT mouse!
I just got the Kensington Slimblade trackball mouse and it's a nice design mouse however there's 2 things I don't like about it.
1. The trackball makes this little electronic sound every time you rotate the ball and it gets a bit annoying when you use the ball a lot.
2. You can't click on the ball like a button as like regular scroll wheels can.
EDIT:
This mouse just sucks. After only a few hours of use the trackballs goes out on it completely and becomes un-responsive. This is going back to them and I want a refund. The people also over there at Kensington also don't know how to re-ply to e-mails as well.
...thanks for that review, now I know I don't need to waste my time/money to try one out...too bad though, they look slick and I wanted one for a while...
I've also had my v470 for some time now - 14 months and it still looks brand new...