More Dual

Buttons

Most quality mice don't have problems in this region and the Logitech is no exception. All the buttons have a good feel; the wheel is no slouch either. My gripe with this new mouse is the thumb button; currently, it is placed beneath where the thumb rests. This doesn't seem to do the trick for me. The old version of the mouse also had the same positioning. After using that mouse for almost a year now, I can easily say that the thumb button has been pressed all of a handful of times. My thumb isn't used to going down to press a button, and it hasn't changed to accommodate it. The movement to hit the thumb button isn't exactly hard, but it seems a little odd to me. I'll place the standard disclaimer here - try it out for yourself, what we like might not agree with what you like.

Performance

The meat and potatoes of a mouse review, how the thing moves. The new Logitech design does indeed improve upon the movement of the mouse as a whole. Claims that tracking issues are gone, are marketing mumbo jumbo. For most users, the mouse will track perfectly, but depending on the settings you use, results will vary. Problems that users will encounter are generally based on what acceleration and sensitivity settings are used. We're going to guess that most users land in the middle of the sensitivity scale. Movement problems there are pretty much nil. But for some more demanding users, like me, nothing but the maximum setting is sufficient. At that setting results get considerably more hairy. But you also need to twitch about much less at that high of a sensitivity. But other problems do creep up, which we will discuss later.

Underbelly

Is it a male?

Feet

The mouse feet on the Dual are from the substance that all the other Logitech mice use. While it isn't bad, the feet do tend to wear down quicker in comparison to the Microsoft mice. Also, the initial movement of the mouse is not as fluid as that of the Microsoft mice. If you like a bit more grit to your movement, the Logitech might be for you.

Drivers

We've always liked the features that Logitech drivers had to offer, but it's really sad to see that there hasn't been much progress since last year. The Web Wheel that we liked so much is still present, but everything remains the same. We also took a shine to Logitech's take on orientation. If you aren't familiar with this feature, it adjusts the cardinal directions of the mouse to the way you move it. So if you have a slightly angled use of the mouse, it will still give you straight arrow movement. Most mice have this feature, but when setting orientation, Logitech went one step further - you are allowed to do this at your speed settings. This more accurately represents how the orientation would be in actual use. On the downside of the drivers -they take up quite a bit of resources. They currently eat up about 10 MB of system resources, which seems a bit much for added the functionality of the Web Wheel.