Review: Logitech Cordless Optical Trackman

I’ve had a Cordless Optical Trackman now for a couple of months. I originally bought it because I was starting to get a sore left hand: I transferred my mouse to the left a couple of years ago.It took me about a week to get used to it, but once I was comfortable, I found it better than using the mouse with my right hand.

Anyway, back to the Logitech. I bought the Logitech because it looked like the best designed trackball, apart possibly from the Microsoft trackball, which is no longer available.

My hand position is mostly good.  It fits the palm of my hand nicely. It’s got a shelf for the thumb which provides a very comfortable rest.

I’ve had no problems with the cordlessness. I haven’t had to replace the batteries yet. But corded wouldn’t have made any difference either: it sits in one position on the desk, and you don’t tend to need to move it.

Now the annoyances…

Very early on I noticed that the scroll wheel was very clicky, putting up a lot of resistance as I turned it. For someone who uses a mouse a lot, this isn’t a great design. I think that this is standard on Logitech mice, and it’s one of the reasons that I’ve always avoided Logitech devices. So I disassembled it and found that I could remove the little spring that gave the wheel the click. I’ve found this MUCH better.

The next niggle I’ve had: with standard setup, the main button is pressed using the thumb. Now this is quite comfortable, but the mechanism is stiff, and you have to give quite a press. For short usage, this is no problem. But after clicking and dragging all day, I find that my thumb was becoming tired! I took it apart again to see if I could do something to make the click better, but they’ve used a sealed microswitch, and I couldn’t find a way to adjust it. So I switched the main button the the right hand side. This button falls under the ring finger, and the switch that Logitech have used there is much better: it only needs a light touch to click.

However, one negative result of this change is that I find that I’m splaying my fingers to roll the ball, while being able to click. Not good.

[Later: I eventually changed the main button back to the left because my fingers were starting to hurt.]

The Trackman has a lot of buttons. The two main buttons and five others. Six if you count the click on the mousewheel. I think that’s terrific: more buttons make the mouse more useful. But there’s a problem: Logitech don’t support Linux on this device and I’ve found myself using Linux a great deal in the last couple of months. To the extent that it’s become my primary operating system!!

It works fine on Linux and most of the buttons do something, but it would be very nice if there was a dedicated control panel for the mouse. On the other hand: the Windows driver/control panel for the mouse weighs in at 55MB!

Overall impression. Not as good as I’d hoped. I was hoping that I would be converted to trackballs, and while I’ll carry on using it, I’m a bit disappointed; there shouldn’t be this many issues with a product that only does a few things and costs fifty quid.

Would I buy one again? No, probably not. But perhaps I’ll buy one of the other trackballs to see if they are any better. I’m not very keen though to buy another Logitech product: I’d feel like I was rewarding them for not being good enough.