Apple’s Bluetooth Mighty Mouse and Logitech’s MX Revolution. Two new mice, and they couldn’t be further apart in concept, usage, and feature set. The Mighty Mouse is an Apple mouse in every sense of the word: it is unobtrusive, it acts like a real mouse and it is more or less ergonomic. The MX Revolution is (or tries to be) a completely new concept for a pointing device.

I was curious to see how well these two new pointing devices behaved in daily operations. And frankly: I can’t make up my mind. The Bluetooth Mighty Mouse fits my hand better, while the MX Revolution is more of a powerhouse mouse. It is a successful extension of your keyboard.

The Bluetooth Mighty Mouse feels just the same as its corded brother, the Mighty Mouse with tail. The only thing that makes it much better is the absence of a cable. It sets the mouse free, and allows you to glide it across your desktop as far as you can go. The included software is good enough as far as I’m concerned. It enables you to use the mouse buttons any way Apple thinks you see fit, and that’s surprisingly close to what an average user might need.

There are people who have complained about the Mighty Mouse’s software capabilities. They are dissatisfied because they can’t reprogram every button exactly the way they want to. Personally, I believe that, if that’s waht you want, you’d better buy a Wacom tablet --you gain a tablet and super-customisable software in the progress.

Mighty Mouse also performs better in terms of tracking. The Bluetooth version has laser tracking which shows in they way this mouse behaves on surfaces with a texture. To round off, Mighty Mouse is a nice mouse, with some innovative technology that is mainly under the hood. But in essence, Mighty Mouse remains a pointing device, no more, no less.

Logitech MX Revolution

Revolutionary in more than one sense, that is Logitech’s MX Revolution. First off there’s the metal wheel that will spin freely and thus make for a much faster scroll through lists, documents, etc. While the metal wheel is an innovation that immediately attracts your attention, the whole concept comes into its own with the included Logitech Control Center. The software will make an educated guess at when the wheel should be allowed to freely spin.

This translates in Safari and Firefox always have a freely spinning scroll wheel, because that makes sense, while in BBEdit and Final Cut Pro, the wheel behaves like any ordinary mouse. In those applications, you can then set the wheel free by pressing the scroll wheel yourself which audibly sets the wheel in free mode.

The thumbwheel is less of an innovation in my opinion. By default, it will allow you to switch between applications. This could have been a great feature, but to my liking is too fast to be really useful, and I’m so used to doing it by command-tabbing (on Mac OS X), that the thumbwheel is not really helping me at all.

What is helpful and again innovative, is the way the search button on top of the MX Revolution works. Simply select terms in a document or a list, press the button and a Spotlight search for those terms is initiated.

This is what makes the Logitech MX Revolution conceptually new. It has become more than just a pointing device. It’s an extension of the keyboard and a helpful at that. And it looks awesome. The Mighty Mouse is white and unobtrusive. The MX Revolution is like a sportscar. It’s black, aggressive, and has curves which support the hand very well. It has shiny touches and rubberized areas where it matters and it’s fast.

Logitech has provided the MX Revolution with rechargeable Li-Ion batteries. The charging stand is small and handy to put on your desk.

If I were to choose between these two mice, I would opt for the MX Revolution.