Fuck You, Logitech

Yeah I'm done with your shit here, guys. I realize I sound like an angry idiot, but it has to be said...

Despite carefully designing pretty good peripherals, you decide to use the world's shittiest microswitches, from OMRON, with flimsiest metal contacts and springs I have ever seen, meaning that eventually, the user has to open up the mouse, tinker the little switch enclosures open, and then adjust the tiny metal plates that have become too weak to enable continuous contact, AKA 'click-dragging'. And eventually, after a couple of these procedures, the metal piece snaps off, and I find it was soldered onto the switch (despite older models of the same switch sliding in and out of a frame) and now the whole thing is broken, since I don't have an iron or anything (I'm not an electrical engineer or even a hobbyist) and that M-500 I was so happy to use (even though both the right and left buttons began to fail all the time), is a write-off because I'm not going to buy and solder new microswitches to replace the shitty, terrible ones you so casually throw into your mice. Oh and they're situated in such a finnicky little manner it's almost as if you expect them to work forever and people will never have to do home repairs on them. If you used your own products you would see differently.  Fuck you very much.

After this heartbreak, I will never buy another Logitech mouse. I will return to bargain mice and terrible scroll wheels and bad ergonomics, and I will lament the 40 dollar mouse that lasted just a bit longer than two years when it is traveling to the dump with the rest of the garbage - compromised as it was by a tiny and central component. Months of annoyance and little procedures and really, they have no excuse because far shittier mice ($5-10 bargains) have lasted so much longer, with contacts that didn't fail until the actual plastic bits gave out... but sure, Logitech'll keep making pretty sweet, $40 dollar mice with 5 cent components, because quality means higher than average prices and worse than average components. It's not rocket science to test how many millions of times a microswitch can operate before failure, and it's simple logic (tech logic even) to ensure they can last – after all, nobody is paying that much for a mouse who is going to use it only casually.

While I'm at it, in an era of optical mice that use lasers instead of the ancient system of balls in a rolling enclosure, why have the mechanics of the switches not changed at all? I get that there is a bottom line...  you know that's basically all that matters, come to think of it. Still I don't think most companies intentionally hamstring their products so blatantly... years of complaints and no specific response says plenty about your business.

People, if you use a mouse more than an hour a day, and you need it to be good, and you want it to last, just don't make it a Logitech and it should keep working for at least four years. Theirs was the first mouse I'd ever used where the buttons failed in such an annoying and prompt manner, only to precipitate such a discouraging incident where I am forced to play technician (this way it can be claimed that my actions caused the product to stop working as intended, disregarding the fact that the product no longer functioning as intended caused my actions). In fact just use the mouse you got with the that tower you bought in the mid-2000s, despite being basically free it will outlast a 'quality, ergonomically sound, easy to use' Logitech mouse. Or just get a used ball mouse out of the garbage dump - it'll probably still work and when you're done with it the little ball can be used as a projectile.

Most peripherals in the computer world are shit. The more they cost - the dumber the buyer. That seems to be the law all the big players operate by. You either buy really cheap things or really expensive things, and everything in the middle is a big risk... like the $40 Logitech M-500, which will stop clicking correctly long before your computer is obsolete, and which has probably the best scroll wheel of all time, which you can actually take out of the old mouse and, if you know enough or intend to learn, jury rig onto another mouse.

So ends the saga of the computer mouse.

Another Cool Thing from 2010

Most of the time I look at all the gadgetry for sale around the world and I remain unimpressed. Wireless, touch screen, 4G, Macintosh – none of these keywords really hook me. YouTube is filled with videos of possibly real people telling me how cool Kinect is or why I should get a better phone or how excited I should be about the endless possibilities of the not-so-modern obsession with gadgets. People actually make videos of themselves unpacking the completely superfluous things they buy, the neuroticism of which I'll get into in a later blog post.

I'm sure an iPhone is useful, but nationalism decrees that I should buy a Blackberry. I myself think, of course, that a Samsung cellphone with no special features is good enough for me. It even flips open, the battery life is a dream, and it can take a picture if I make it. However, I have a camera to take pictures, and a computer to waste my time on, so I don't need to focus on how many games are available for my cellphone, how sensitive the onboard camera is, or how fast it connects to the internet.

The only cool thing I've been informed about is the critically underhyped Logitech K750, the world's first (so far as I know) solar-powered wireless keyboard. Let me make an ignorant statement: wireless peripherals do not impress me. Wires are a small price to pay for not having to buy batteries or deal with delayed input. Most of the time the hassles of wires are just replaced by other, high-frequency hassles that I do not even like to think about. Wires were good enough for me...


...until I heard about a solar powered keyboard. The thing looks like a dream, and is the only gadget I've been excited about or thought about buying. It seems like Logitech, who have always been making quality peripherals, are actually interested in limiting the amount of hassles their products create. I haven't bought a single new peripheral in years. My current keyboard is indestructible: I've spilled wine, beer, and other things on it and it works like new. It's just loud, kind of clunky, and has a wire and doesn't work off solar power.

Reality check: my optical mouse is from some no-name brand and has put more costly mice to shame in online games frequented by professionals. It is also indestructible. I have tried to crush it when the world of computers has frustrated me, and it has survived falls, tumbles, tosses, flips, and jumps as if it is a skateboarder. Because my peripherals haven't failed me, I haven't ever had to look for new ones, but that K750 seems so cool, so useful, that it should almost be standard for new gadgets to have such features.

I can face the facts: keyboards are not interesting. That is true, but they are necessary and it helps if they can be moved around a lot. For a writer, a good keyboard is indispensable - and while all keyboards are dependable because of their simplicity, never before has anyone made a wireless keyboard that could be indefinitely useful and actually make more sense than a comparable wired unit. I guess if you hate the sun, nature, and Logitech, the new 'eco-friendly' keyboard won't matter to you, but I intend on getting one as soon as they're available in my ass-backwards country.