Logitech Cordless Desktop MX3200 Laser Review

I could give my loyal readers--all none of you--my thoughts on the NL East and West, which I have been promising for a couple of days now. I could give you my thoughts on yet another racist-in-denial in the sports world, and yes, as much as I knock it, women's college basketball is a sport (but don't get me started on the "pro" game :P). I could talk about David Carr moving on to Carolina, a very good decision, IMO. I could talk about Billy Gillispie taking the Kentucky job, a move that I like for a couple of reasons, BTW. Heck, I could even make a comment or two about The Masters, and how Tiger Woods is struggling; then again, just about everyone is at Augusta.

I could talk about any, or all, of the above topics. However, I have a brand new toy, courtesy of Logitech's RMA service + DHL, who delivered the package two business days earlier than the tracking number indicated. I found a Logitech Cordless Desktop MX3200 Laser keyboard + mouse combination sitting on my doorstep. Here's my brief, mini-review, of the combo:

The first thing that I noticed was the LCD on the keyboard. Yes, there's an LCD on the keyboard, with a clock, alarm, and stopwatch function, because it's too difficult to look at the bottom-right corner of my screen to see the Windows clock there. As with most keyboards nowadays, there is a row of "media" keys--reverse, play/pause, forward, record, mute, volume down/up, etc., though I noticed there is no stop button. Previous Logitech keyboards I've owned had a scroll wheel for the volume control; this keyboard has volume down/up buttons instead. I kinda liked the scroll wheel, despite the fact that all turn-y button things lie.

For the most part, the keyboard arrangement is identical to that of my old Logitech keyboard, a Logitech MX3000. The only noticeable difference, of the main keys, at least, is the loss of the context-click (the "right-click") key, which is now the "Fn" (programmable function) key.

(EDITED 5/7/07: The context-click key can be accessed by hitting the Fn key and the Print Screen key at the same time. Also, scroll lock can be accessed by hitting Fn + Pause/Break. I bring up the latter because I get a lot of hits on my site of people, apparently, looking for the location of the scroll lock key.)

That's not a big deal to me, as I hardly ever used the context-click key. I would have preferred the Fn key at the top of the keyboard, rather than with the usual keys, though. On the left side of the MX3200, Logitech got rid of the back button, which also wasn't really useful to me, since I find myself clicking the back button on my mouse most of the time. Logitech also got rid of the manual scroll wheel on the left side of the keyboard, replacing it with a touch-pad-like scroller! Even though I do most of my scrolling with the mouse wheel, I must admit that this is a cool feature.

The USB receiver is the size of a jump drive, which got me thinking, "This thing is too small! I'll probably need to buy a USB extension cable (A-male to A-female) to give the keyboard and mouse a better line of sight to the receiver!" Sifting through the rest of the box, though, I found just what I needed--basically, a USB extension cable, with a cool little stand at one end that sits neatly on your desk (I'd take a picture to better describe what I'm talking about, but I can't find my digital camera)! The size of the receiver made sense to me when I took a closer look at the box, and noticed that the MX3200 was labeled as "notebook ready." After all, a notebook ready keyboard/mouse needs to have a very small receiver, no? I also noticed that the keyboard had "Anti-Microbial Technology." No comment, your honor...

The mouse, an MX600 Laser mouse, is nothing special. It has the typical five-button layout (left, right, mouse wheel, back, and forward, with the mouse wheel able to tilt left and right). It also has three extra buttons: zoom (+ and -), and search, two buttons that I probably will never use. It is a very lightweight mouse, though, despite its size; I remember the mouse that came with the MX Duo was significantly heavier than the MX600.

One thing I really like about the keyboard is the soft, rubberized feel that the keys and the mouse have, as opposed to the plastic feel that my older MX3000 keyboard had. Even the wrist rest has that same softness to it. For me, that isn't really necessary, as I use a gel wrist rest. One major drawback, though, of this combo is the six AA battery requirement (four for the keyboard, two for the mouse). It makes sense that this keyboard will need more than the typical two batteries, of course, because of that darn LCD! A more minor drawback to this keyboard/mouse combo is the absence of a caps/num/scroll lock indicator. Usually these Logitech combos have indicator LEDs on the receiver itself, but this is not the case with the MX3200. This is not a problem if you choose to install the SetPoint software, as the software would flash a message on-screen when you strike any of these -lock keys (I don't have the software installed; the most recent version I used, back when it was called iTouch, seemed to be bloated). It's a shame that Logitech didn't include these indicators on the LCD screen on the keyboard.

All in all, I'm quite happy with the combo, and can easily recommend it to anyone who needs a new keyboard/mouse set, provided you can find a hot deal, of course :)

- Super quick MLB predictions, with analyses to come at a later date:

AL Central: Detroit Tigers
NL East: New York Mets
NL Central: St. Louis Cardinals
NL West: Los Angeles Dodgers

Until next time, happy blogging!