Beneath that black-dotted burgundy ball lies the secret of the Marble Mouse's responsiveness, longevity and reliability. An infrared emitter and optical pickup track the movement of the ball, not mechanical rollers which quickly become gunked up with skin oils and dust. You'd have to let a really thick layer of crud accumulate on the ball before you'll see an impact on the Marble Mouse's performance. Small enough to tuck into your notebook, laptop or PowerBook's carrying case, the Marble Mouse is pure computing bliss compared to jittery trackpads, wobbly finger sticks and erratic rollerballs.

PC users running Windows XP and earlier can simply install the PS/2 adapter and plug the Marble Mouse into the PS/2 mouse port without installing any software. With Windows 98 and later, you can pop off the PS/2 adapter and plug the Marble Mouse into a USB port. Macintosh owners running Mac OS 8.6 or higher will need to install MouseWare from the included CD-ROM and disable the Macintosh Mouse control panel in the Mac OS Extension Manager.

Unlike its more expensive TrackMan siblings, the Marble Mouse is fully ambidextrous, with equal-sized buttons on both sides. The included Logitech MouseWare (also downloadable at www.logitech.com) makes the Marble Mouse behave like a 3-button mouse on PCs (you press BOTH buttons together to access the functions of a third button) while giving Macintosh users one-finger, one-click access to content menus (shades of Windows, eh? :) ). Windows users also benefit from the new page up/page down buttons located just above the main buttons.

Finally, though the price might seem steep compared to a $5 mouse you could pick up at Best Buy or CompUSA, recall how many of those cheap little rodents you've owned and thrown away in the course of a single year.


Stop chasing that mouse!   March 21, 2004
 36 out of 41 found this review helpful

I have been using this product for about two years and finally got one for my home computer as well. If you are like me, and find yourself chasing the regular mouse all over your desk, give this a try. After two years of very busy use in a very dusty library (where I work), it has never needed a single cleaning and works like the first day I got it. The buttons are set up beautifully so that it feels very natural in the hand. It is extremely responsive, and the scroll feature works great. The cursor movement is smooth as glass. No more mouse pad taking up a nice chunk of my desk! No more bouncing, jerky cursor due to a slight bit of gunk. No more popping off the bottom the mouse and cleaning the wheels with a pen knife! I highly recommend this product. --Mykal Banta


Solves one problem area by creating (multiple) new ones   October 28, 2004
 19 out of 24 found this review helpful

I got this trackball to relieve my ever-worsening case of carpal tunnel. In my case, I get pains in the back of my hand as soon as I lay it flat, palm face down. I've used this thing for several months now.

GOOD POINTS:
#1 - I love the buttons, no joke. I have mine set to L/R click, page forward, page back, and Universal Scroll (L+R click together), mainly because I'm used to having webpage scrolling buttons and to avoid redundancy. The default settings have page up and page down buttons, but why do that if you have universal scroll?

#2 - This is ambidextrous, so you can switch sides whenever you feel the strain.

#3 - You're not using your thumb to move the ball around. Doing so puts a lot of strain on the thumb joint.

BAD POINTS - and there are a LOT of them:
- Poorly designed casing and ball causes strain on fingers, palm, and knuckles.

Aside from the buttons, this trackball is poorly designed. Instead of eliminating RSI completely, it just shifts the strain on your hand from your wrists to your fingers, and it does it pretty quickly.

Depending on how you view it, the ball is placed way too high or the casing is built way too low. The Logitech Marble Mouse leaves your entire palm suspended in the air, making it very difficult to use..

With this Logitech Marble mouse, every time you move the ball, your entire palm moves up and down resulting in two things: (a) your motions are exaggerated, decreasing accuracy; and (b) you develop tension in your fingers and the upper part of the palm. In essence, you're shifting the strain from your wrist to your fingers. I've got pretty skinny fingers and I do a lot of hobbies requiring a lot of manual dexterity and fingerwork, so I can definitely feel the difference. It's like i'm always fighting the ball to keep it from overshooting. One solution I've tried is to turn down the sensitivity, but it is a pain in the ass AND it also means I have to do more spinning to move the cursor around. More motion, more overshoots, not worth it.

If I try to rest the suspended section of my fingers against the plastic, my fingers curl up over the ball uncomfortably and it puts tension on the tendons on the back of my hand.

Compare/contrast the control you have with a Cordless Logitech Trackman - your entire palm is at rest and supported by the casing, so only your fingers are twitching to control the ball. I have significantly better control with the Cordless Trackman than this thing.

#2 - Ambidextrous design means my hand is still pronated. It's not really getting rid of the problem, but the strain is reduced since I'm not moving my whole arm. But that's about it.

#3 - It's not Cordless. There's no reason for a trackball to NOT be cordless. If you're concerned about mousing ergonomics, one of the best things you can do is to cut down on the amount of weight you're pushing around. That's why all the super-serious ergonomic mice (3M Renaissance, Evoluent VerticalMouse) have cords - cordless mice need batteries. With trackballs, you're not pushing the entire unit, you're just twiddling a ball. Battery weight doesn't even factor into this equation.

I would recommend dedicated righties looking into this trackball to seriously consider coughing up the extra money to get the Cordless Optical Trackman. I dont' know if Logitech makes a lefty version.

I'd also recommend getting a side-neutral mouse like the Whale Mouse and learning how to mouse with your other hand. I'm currently using a cordless optical trackman for my right hand and switching to a crappy $5 wheelmouse for my left hand whenever the need arises.


The best Trackball out there   December 4, 2002
 14 out of 14 found this review helpful

I have long been a fan of Logitech products, and once again they have raised the bar! I don't know why anyone still uses a mouse. I prefer using a trackball because it fits in a small space on the desktop and it does not cause the fatigue that you get using a traditional mouse. I use this device extensively for fine graphics work, as well as major surf time.
I used to use a Kensington Trackball, because at the time, it was the only one designed to be manipulated with your fingers, instead of your thumb. The optical marble mouse does the Kensington one better. The "optical" part of the title says it all. There are no rollers or little crevices for hair and gunk to get caught up in under the ball. I spent more time cleaning my previous mice and trackballs than anything else! Whenever that cursor starting jumping around the screen and skipping over the places I wanted it to go--I knew it was time to ditch the mouse and get a new one. This optical marble mouse has no rollers. It is very easy to keep clean--and so far (8months) I have had none of the problems of my previous mice. The accompanying software for this trackball also has some nice shortcut features. I have one button programmed to instantly "minimize all open windows." A really nifty trick if you have to blank your monitor quickly.....like when the boss is coming around :)


4 years and no turning back   June 18, 2003
 14 out of 14 found this review helpful

I am at a computer almost all day long and about 4 years ago, I decided to try out the Logitech Optical Marble Mouse, because my arm and wrist were getting too tired from the old mouse.
It took about 1 week to get used to it, but after that learning curve was through, I was so convinced, that I haven't used a mouse extensively since. In fact, when I started a new job, the first thing I did, was buy another Marble Mouse, so that I wouldn't have to struggle with a regular mouse at my workplace.

Except in extreme situations, hand fatigue is a thing of the past for me and the marble mouse I bought four years ago is still working perfectly.

One trick is to set it up so that the right button is the main button and the left button is the context button. In use, I press the right button with any combination of my pinkie, ring finger or middle finger. By distributing the clicking duties between three fingers, the muscle usage is more evenly distributed and repetative motion problems are not a problem.

In fact the beauty of this design is that it is so simple that one is able to use it however you want to. Other trackballs that are overly molded to fit your hand end up causing problems because they force your hand to be in a particular position all day long.

It is also easy to switch between left and right hand use -- though I almost always use right hand.

I do have to clean it during the day, but this is extremely easy. Basically I just pick the ball out of its socket and flick away any dirt that has built up. It takes about 15 seconds and no special cleaning solutions or anything.

If I was running a company, I would make everyone try one of these out for a week. They are amazing computing tools and would be standard issue for all computers if I ran the world.