SetPoint
I am not a big fan of mouse software. I feel that currently they are poorly coded and too large in download size and resource usage. Suffice to say that my feelings towards SetPoint are not exactly welcoming. Functionality wise this application works extremely well, however I find it sad that it should require approx 23MB of ram just to add functionality to a mouse. The download size of SetPoint was a colossal 40MB. I hate to think of the proper install size once I installed it onto Windows Vista.
After installation, SetPoint detected the MX610 and downloaded some additional MX610 components from the Internet. SetPoint sets itself up to run in the background and can be called up at anytime via its icon, which resides in the system tray. This icon can be hidden from view at any time you wish.
I had very little adjustments to make in SetPoint, just the mouse wheel that had to be set to act as a scrolling wheel rather than Zoom. Setpoint had not changed much since I last tried it with my current Logitech MX518 Corded Gaming mouse, which is my preferred mouse for this main PC. It now automatically detects which mouse has invoked SetPoint and it will configure itself on-the-fly for that particular mouse - very cool!
SetPoint allows you to toggle the Email/IM notifications on or off as well as their duration, which is quite handy. However, I was saddened to see that the only Email/IM clients that are supported seemed to be Microsoft Outlook and MSN/Live Messenger. So if you are considering this mouse because of these Email/IM notification and launcher buttons, please be aware that you MUST be using Outlook Express or Outlook for your Email client, and MSN/Live Messenger of Yahoo Instant Messenger as your IM client. The superb Thunderbird email client from Mozilla.org is not supported, as well as the other IM’s out there. The launch buttons worked fine on my MS Outlook 2007/Live Messenger setup, although the reliability of the flashing LED notifications was poor. Upon receiving a message over Live Messenger, the IM LED would flash some 10seconds after it was received and the same goes for the Email LED although sometimes it would not flash at all despite an email being received by Outlook 2007.
However since I was not going to require the Email/IM features of these two buttons on my Media PC, these issues did not bother me in the slightest. Hopefully Logitech will update its software in future to remedy this issue.
My Experience
I was expecting the MX610 to be as usable and responsive as my corded MX518 - possibly the best Logitech mouse I have ever come across. First impressions of the MX610’s usage however were disappointing.
The first thing users do when they receive a new mouse is to tweak the pointer speed in the Control Panel/Mouse applet in Windows. This applet now links to SetPoint (if installed) otherwise, it uses the standard Windows mouse applet. However with either Windows or Setpoint’s mouse pointer controls, I could not find that sweet spot for pointer movement. I set the pointer speed to what I thought was ‘good’, and then set the mouse acceleration to Low. However, this just felt odd and nothing like my the movement on my MX518. I found that the cursor could move rapidly as it should do, but minute movements had a small amount of latency to it. With rapid jerk movements, I found that I could not accurately target on screen elements properly, E.G. a window close (X) button which I completely overshot.
One could put the blame on this latency on interference from wireless devices in my room. However, my mobile phone at the time was switched off and my wireless router has its wireless access point switched off so I’m not sure if it was interference. Range was not an issue however and I could maintain mouse control 7 metres away before running out of space in my room to move further back.
Two days later, my tweaks yielded better results. I managed to tweak the pointer speed a bit more and ended up with moderately good results - good enough for my Media PC anyway. Since I will not be gaming on it, I do not really require fast accurate responses but I am used to fast pointer speeds as I use multiple screens on a daily basis, so I depend on fast movement from one screen to another.