Crusader
James Eavis
posts : 91
| apologies to anyone who has just returned from intensive care from the shock of finding out i updated my column 
i just got myself a new mouse, a logitech mx 500. it seems to be aimed at the same market the dual optical one was, only it has more gimmicks, although not as many as the mx 700 which is cordless, rechargeable and has a docking station to charge in. previously i'd used the dualoptical mouseman (tm - probly) which was nice once you got used to the shape, although lacking in buttons compared with the ms explorer series.
so, the mx500. the shape is much like the dualopti, slightly thinner and deeper so it feels less like its going to authorise your palmprint for access to your system any second. unlike pretty much any mouse i've seen recently, the left&right mouse buttons aren't seperate from the mouse "shell", but are moulded into it. points for style, no difference in functionality.
the most noticeable thing about the mx500 is the amount of buttons they've put on it. not only does it have left&right mouse as you'd expect, and the now obligatory mouse wheel, it also has one button in front of the wheel (which defaults to "cruise up", think automatic scroll up while you press the button), and two behind it (the one nearest the wheel is "cruise down"). the second behind the wheel defaults to the same function alt-tab performs, a quick task switching system. note, it doesn't actually *do* alt-tab, that would be logical, no it just performs the exact same function except using a vertical task list not a horizontal one.
i presume that was done so you notice that logitech took the time to reimplement something for no real functional gain, a key concept that this mouse seems to be built around.
following that concept there are also two thumb buttons that can just about be used if you rock your thumb forward or back to reach them rather than just try and press them. they're fairly large buttons compared to the little stubby ones by the mouse wheel, and are satisfyingly tactile with a nice click when pressed. so, more points for style. the problem is that by default these buttons do back and forward on whatever your web browser is. something i'm sure millions of people have been waiting expectantly to have incorporated into a mouse. so yet again, no points for functionality.
thankfully the mouse uses the common mouseware so its just a case of plugging the new one in before you boot and mouseware will detect and offer you the chance to configure your new mouse immediately windows starts. and as ever the options you have to assign to the various buttons are quite lengthy, but not, i find, particularly useful. you can assign most common commands such as copy, paste, explore my computer, find files, close application, maximise or minimise windows etc. which may possibly save a few microseconds in an hour of time. you can't assign the buttons to be mouse 4 and 5 etc., although you can assign them to be the middle button, removing the need to gamble on being able to press the wheel down without turning it.
so, on to how it handles q3 then. well, you only get 3 buttons and the wheel to use, basically. you can assign a single keypress to the extra buttons instead if you want, which might be handy for some people with scripted setups, but for myself i bound one of the thumb buttons to ctrl so i can multiselect files one-handed. that'll save me a good minute or so over the course of a year, really.
anyway, yes, q3. i load q3 into osp as per my default settings, and go for a test run around q3dm6. everything feels like its being moved through tar. i check my config has been executed and the sensitivity is at my normal "20". which it is. hmmm. so, the mx500 has more resolution than the dualoptical, i'm thinking. i didn't check the stats before i bought it as the extra buttons appealed to me so i try my original sensitivity, waaay back when i first started q3, of "29". still feels slow. eventually i settled at "40".
so, now i have the sensitivity as wired as i like it, time to pay attention to how the buttons work. its only then that i notice how the wheel isn't working. i quit q3 and try it in notepad and mozilla, scrolls merrily. hmmmm. i check the registry settings from logitech's "game_whl.reg" are still present in my registry. these settings are supposed to stop logitech's mouseware intercepting signals from the mouse before an application (read game) can receive them. they're all still set in the registry, no changes from when they worked on my dualoptical.
after about an hour of faffing about trying new and old driver versions (the most recent is 9.73 at time of writing and works fine), turning registry settings on and off, turning control panel settings on and off as per instructions on various websites, and checking the mouse is connected properly (i know i know the wheel works in the rest of windows so its not a connection problem but you know, when you're out of options..) .. nothing. nothing fixed it, wheel works fine anywhere but in games.
so, i did the unthinkable, the anathema and heresy of all good quad-fearing quakers, i read the readme file that came with the drivers. and lo-and-behold, the information about getting the wheel working with games is entirely different. no longer does it tell me to use the game_whl.reg file, no longer does it say to turn off the ms office scroll only settings. now it says to turn on the office only settings. and make sure the "scroll current window only" setting is on too. so, what the hell i think, i've tried everything else. i set it up as per the readme, load q3 and... nothing. wheel still fails to work in q3.
then, in desperation, i try the only remaining untried configuration, i turn in_mouse to "-1" in q3. and bugger me senseless with a stick of rock, it works. wheel movements can be bound and are registered in q3.
so, in the hopes that it might keep a few other people sane and with more hair attached to their heads, i decided to post the details of my adventure here for all to point and laugh at.
now, if logitech could just make a mouse that looked cool, felt good, and *did* something functional..
if you've got a dualoptical or similar and are thinking of the mx500, then i'd counsel you to stick with what you've got unless you can make use of 4 new buttons that can only really be bound to keypresses, and a seperate "middle button" button. and the resolution is better and should be alot smoother moving around and great for you low sensitivity folks. oh, and it looks cool too.
update:
i got it working in q3, but it steadfastly refuses to work in any other game currently. i think it must be a directx issue as in_mouse "1" doesn't work and thats supposed to be a newer dx version if i read the docs correctly, and newer games don't appear to work, and dxdiag doesn't detect it as an input device (not sure if it detected the dual opti though). i've updated to dx 8.1 (which it was at already anyway) but no joy. how annoyingly shit.
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logitech mx500 & quake 3
