Logitech Ships 500 Millionth Mouse

ipxodi writes "Logitech marks the milestone of 500 million shipped mice. Mice first widely appeared in consumer form on the original Macintosh, but have appeared in various forms back through time to 1964 when they were invented by Doug Englebart. My favorite mouse is also my current mouse, a Logitech Optical Wheel mouse. I also remember some oddities beyond the old bar-of-soap shaped mice of the mid 80's, like one with a crosshair attachment for clicking on specific points of a blueprintfor CAD input. What's your favorite current or past mouse?" My first mouse was back in 1987, for my Apple //c. It cost $50, and came with a double-sided floppy that contained an interactive instructional program on side one, and MousePaint (a port of MacPaint) on side two. Memories!

crosshairs?

[ender_wiggins]

The crosshairs were on a puck. Connected to a digitiser pad, not a mouse. mice have balls, digipads dont.

Doug Engelbart

[VAXGeek]

Doug also invented the GUI and Smalltalk (www.squeak.org). Most of you are familiar with the GUI, but you really should give Squeak a look. It's a pretty cool development enviornment.

PARC?

[s20451]

I always thought Xerox PARC, that place that made money for everybody except Xerox, invented the mouse [wikipedia.org]. Is that just common misconception?

demo of the first mouse

[The Unabageler]

amazing what google can pull up. here's a website [stanford.edu] about Engelbart's demo of the first mouse

Re:PARC?

[iocat]

Actually Xerox PARC did make money for Xerox. The dough they made for developing and licensing the patents to the laser printer made the whole enterprise profitable in the long run. What they failed to do was successfully capitalize on their other achievements, like the GUI/mouse system, etc. "Dealers of Lightning : Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age" (available wherever books on Xerox PARC are sold, such as Amazon) is a really good look at the story of PARC.

Re:Logitech 3 button mouse, no wheel!

[Brandybuck]

Try pixelusa.com [pixelusa.com]

Only $8.00 and they have lots in stock.

Re:Trackman Marble+

[stretch0611]

That is also my favorite. Technically it is a trackball [logitech.com] not a mouse, but I own about 6 of them for use on my multiple computers. I even use one at the office.

Movement is ver precise, even when they are very dirty it is easy to move the pointer where you want it on the screen. It uses a laser to track the movement of dots on the surface of the ball instead of any physical motion device. I bought my first one for $99 about 5 years ago and it is still going strong. The only problem I have is that they are hard to find in stock. But the logitech store [logitech.com] currently has them for $29.

Re:Wuss

[Mr. Sketch]

Granted the price is a little high for a mouse, but since this is an above-average mouse, it's worth it. As for availablity, I've seen it at Best Buy, in fact that's where I got mine.

Mice Cradles

[agent dero]

If you would have had a nice old MacWorld subscription, on the March 2003 issue, on the back was a great add for the kensington studiomouse, which is wireless, and has a cradle

Studio Mouse [kensington.com]

Beautiful mouse, but, there, question answered, and mice evolution goes on.

Cordless

[Morth]

My best investment mouse-wise was the cordless optical mouse I'm now using. No more cleaning, no more cable getting stuck somewhere.

Simple solution: duct tape (obviously)

[phoenix123]

Cut a fitting piece of duct tape (or transparent plastic tape, found in any office on the northern hemisphere). Put it under the mouse, on the feet, with one stripe covering two feet (x-axis), one above, one below the center and there you go ready for high speed mousing with full accuracy.

And here's the catch: if it accumulates junk from the desk and loses that comfortable feel, add another layer of tape or replace the original tape. You can easily stack more than a dozen layers without a notable difference in mouse feeling. That way you always have a perfectly sliding mouse.

Hardcore gamers go even further: they use the tape and silicone or PTFE-spray (teflon) in small doses - works WONDERS, I tell you...

Re:Cordless

[Quixotic Raindrop]

I agree (mostly) ... but, instead of the Cordless Optical mouse, I use the Cordless Trackman Wheel [logitech.com]. I've used the Cordless Trackman ever since it first came out, back in 1997 (IIRC). I find that the thumb trackball is a lot more precise even than the Wacom tablet w/pen that I have, possibly because years of caffeine ingestion have made the muscles in my forearm twitch like a disembodied lizard's tail.

Logitech Dual Optical advantages

[madmancarman]

Any real geek could have a Dual Optical Mouse. Also available at Thinkgeek. That is definately my favorite mouse.

I agree completely. I was using a Kensington ADB 4-button mouse on my G3 Mac for ProTools when one of the buttons decided to die, and I had heard good things about the Logitech Dual Optical, so I picked one up and I couldn't be happier. The two things I dislike about most optical mice are 1) the (lack of) mass and 2) the width. Kensington and Microsoft optical mice are a little too wide and flat for my preferences; I like how Logitech mice are shaped a little higher.

The best thing about the Logitech Dual Optical, though, is how massive (heavy) it is compared to most other optical mice. The components of optical mice are, by their very nature, lighter than the traditional ball mice, and from years of shoving around heavier mice, I can't handle those flimsy plastic things. The Dual Optical has some meat on its bones, and it tracks more smoothly than any other optical I've used. Great mouse!

Re:PARC?

[dfung]

Arrgh! You're the closest one yet, but not quite...

Doug Englebart worked at the Stanford Research Institute which is located in Menlo Park, the next town over from Stanford University(which is in Stanford, CA, not Palo Alto!).

When he was working on the mouse in the 1960s, there was no Xerox PARC yet. But when it did show up in the 1970's, that's when Dan Ingalls and Ted Kaehler (at PARC) was driven to write Smalltalk by Alan Kay (also at PARC). Kay is a visionary and excellent at focusing something like PARC, but if you want something amazing to actually get written, you need a first class geek like Ingalls to make it happen.

SRI is completely independent from Stanford University now (and for more than 10 years, I'm sure), but I don't think they were completely separate back in the 1960's. SRI does technical consulting work for hire. These days, a university would do that, but back then, SRI appeared to allow a commercial focus independent of the academic setting. I could be wrong on that as it predates my time at Stanford.