Neucode

Introduction
When I first got my laptop a little over a year ago, it came without bluetooth, shortly after receiving my laptop I purchased an internal bluetooth module for my Dell Latitude D610. I spent some time since trying to find the perfect bluetooth mouse to accompany it. I looked at several, from Kensington to MoGo. All the while waiting for either Microsoft or Logitech to produce a bluetooth notebook mouse. They both had desktop mice on the market, neither of which suited my needs. Then I found the Logitech V270.. It is almost identical to the V200 but only comes in two colors, and does not come with a dongle of any kind. Although you can easily purchase a usb bluetooth dongle and the mouse will function perfectly fine.
A quick look at the packaging

Features/Included stuff

• 1000dpi
• pretty good for a notebook mouse, makes the mouse very responsive.
• on/off switch
• You would expect it to be on a mouse, but its worth a mention any how.
• Reset switch
• Had to use it once to clear pairing.
• Comes with a neoprene carry bag to protect it
• Two AA Batteries
• Low battery indicator light
• It uses both to run, not sure on the duration of use before changing.
• It does not come with a bluetooth dongle. It is intended for people who already have one or have internal bluetooth on their systems (ie, Apple Powerbooks, Minis, Intel iMac’s, likely more)

Testing

After some reading on the Logitech website and on the packaging itself, I decided I was going to assume this mouse works in windows. Since there are drivers included, I would not be surprised if it did in fact function perfectly fine.

To see how the mouse functioned I went about my daily tasks of checking email, chatting on MSN, and a little bit of programming. I even left the mouse to sit for about an hour unattended to see how well the connection would work. I had read a few stories about people having trouble keeping their bluetooth mice paired and working. The V270 did not seem to have this problem. I did notice a slight 1/2 second or so delay when starting to use the mouse again, wakeup time I assumed, but once use began it was as responsive as ever.

Testing - OSX

Well, it was easy, I put batteries in it, I turned it on, and it worked. It just worked.

Battery Life

(March 20 2006) I have not had it long enough to test it, but I use my computer for an average of 8-10 hours a day. I will use this mouse and see how long they last. Once I have replaced them I will come back to this and update this section. According to the logitech support site one should expect 2-3 months of usage before having to replace the batteries.

UPDATE (June 13 2006): Its now June 13 and the “low battery” light is flashing. I have been using it for 8 hours a day on average, no gaming. I will continue use untill it dies or becomes un-usable.
Testing - Linux (Gentoo)

This was almost as easy. Once I had removed the pairing from a friends Mac Mini which runs OSX, I went to my Laptop and tried to get it working on there. This was very easy as well, First I pressed the “Reset” button on the bottom of the mouse to make sure that any pairing had been cleared. Once I pushed the button the green LED flashed until the pairing was complete.

To pair the mouse in linux is quite easy if you already have the bluetooth daemons and modules installed (I did). So using the BlueZ suite of tools on my Gentoo Linux setup it was easy. I recommend you consult the main web site for your distrobution to find a guide on getting blue tooth working for you. So, assuming you have BlueZ utils installed, it is a simple matter of typing the following command to get it working.

[code]

Septu ryder # hidd –search
Searching …
Connecting to device AA:BB:CC:FF:DD:EE

Septu ryder #

[/code]
So whats going on here is that you are initializing the HIDD (Human Input Device Daemon) from BlueZ-Utils and telling it to (–)search for and pair with any available bluetooth device. If you see the “Connecting to device AA:BB:CC:FF:DD:EE” where “AA:BB:CC:FF:DD:EE” is the “Bluetooth Address” found on the bottom of your mouse then it should be working. Obviously at this point mine was, I could tell because it clicked when I clicked it, and it moved the cursor when I moved it.

I did not do anything special to my xorg.conf or kernel config (aside from the bluetooth modules). It just worked.

After some googling I found that the bluez-utils can be configured to automatically pair with a device once the inital pairing has been done.

In Gentoo it is as simple as changing the following line in /etc/conf.d/bluetooth

[code]

HIDD_ENABLE=false

[/code]

to

[code]

HIDD_ENABLE=true

[/code]

and then restarting the bluetooth service.

Conclusion

The V270 is a great mouse. The only complaint i have with it is that it does not have a tilit wheel that allows one to scroll horizontally without moving the mouse or using “cruise control”. Aside from that I am amazed at how simple and easy it was to get it working.

I would recommend this mouse to anyone who has a laptop with a builtin bluetooth chipset, or who already has a bluetooth dongle for their phone or PDA. It works great!