I've been having some trouble with tendonitis in my right forearm, so I decided to try using my left hand for the mouse. This quickly proved to be uncomfortable due to the right hand specific design of the mouse I was using. Thus, I went on a search for an ambidextrous mouse. After a bit of research online and some hands-on research in my local store, I chose the Logitech LX8.

I just got the mouse tonight, so these are my initial impressions. I will update this post as I use this mouse more.

The mouse worked out of the box, (for the most part), on Xubuntu 8.04. My laptop has some issues with the 2.6.24 family of kernels, so I'm running the 2.6.22-14. Because of the kernel, my setup may be closer to Xubuntu 7.10. I said that it worked out of the box for the most part because the side buttons did not work as forward and back in Firefox. A quick search on the Ubuntu Forum yielded a solution.

I had to edit the mouse section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf to look like this:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Name" "Logitech USB Receiver"
Option "Phys" "usb-*/input0"
Option "Buttons" "9"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Edit Sept. 1, 2008
I am no longer using the above setup. I am now using the one shown below. Note also that Firefox 3 uses buttons 8 and 9 as back and forward. If you're using Firefox 2, you'll have to change the button mapping order to use buttons 6 and 7.

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 8 9 6 7" #RH
# Option "ButtonMapping" "3 2 1 9 8 6 7" #LH
EndSection

After restarting the X Server, the mouse worked perfectly. I did have to turn down the sensitivity in the mouse settings because of the high resolution of this mouse.

Edit Dec. 22, 2008 - I have changed my xorg.conf settings again and now have the side scrolling working. See this post.

First Impressions:
The button action on all of the buttons seemed easy enough. The side buttons can be easily pressed using your thumb or the side of your ring finger. The Back button is on the left side while the Forward button is on the right.

The tracking on this mouse is excellent. I haven't even tried it on a desktop or mousepad yet. I'm typing this review on the couch with the mouse on the cushion beside me and I haven't had any problems yet.

The scroll wheel feels a little cheap, but works well. It is not a smooth "throwable" wheel like you will find on the MX Revolution, but the Revolution is twice the cost of this one.

I haven't gotten the side scrolling from the tilt wheel working yet. I'll try booting to the 2.6.24 kernel to test it. All functions of this mouse are reported to work on a full-on Ubuntu 8.04 installation.

What's In The Box:

1. The mouse body
2. The USB receiver
3. A USB receiver dock (this is basically a USB extension cord that can be used to improve wireless reception in case your computer tower is on the floor and you're having reception problems).
4. Two AA batteries
5. A very basic quick setup guide

The box does not contain a CD with the Windows drivers. We Linux users are accustomed to not receiving drivers, but some Windows users may be put off by having to download the driver software from Logitech. The download is only 60 Mb, so it shouldn't be a big deal for most.

That's all I have for now. I'll do some testing here at home on Window's 2000 and XP and get things set up with the Logitech drivers. Hopefully this mouse works well in XP without the Logitech software since the main intent for this purchase was to use this at work for general computing and CAD. The IT organization has locked our computers down pretty well, so I doubt I'll be able to install the drivers.

More to come!

Update - March 5, 2009
My first set of batteries finally died yesterday. That's a solid 6 months of use on one set of AA Duracell batteries. I replaced them with some Engergizer batteries I had at the office. Let's hope those do as well.