Drivers

   Over the years, one thing contributed to make Logitech mice so special: their drivers. The MouseMan Traveler comes with the latest 9.27 MouseWare drivers that are as usual very complete in terms of features and work under Windows 95, 98, Me, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. You can change the mouse pointers, enable an option to automatically put the mouse pointer on the default button of a Windows dialog box, and enable pointer trailers. The drivers also let you define the moving speed of the mouse, the acceleration level and the direction of the device. Since a small Logitech icon appears in the tray area of Windows you can change the mouse properties easily by double clicking this icon, or you can check batteries’ level by left clicking the tray icon (if you dislike the tray icon you can hide it). As every good mouse driver does, MouseWare lets you change each mouse button’s allocation: you can define the action the fourth button should perform, choose if a pressure on the wheel should act like a double click or launch the exclusive Logitech WebWheel. The WebWheel feature shows a green circle on your screen where you can select several different internet features like book marking a page, reloading or stopping it, checking your email, searching for information, shopping the web over Logitech portal sites, etc. 

Logitech MouseMan Traveler Configuration Wizard & WebWheel (click to enlarge)

I prefer having my wheel to act like a double click when I push it rather than being annoyed by the so-called webwheel. If you’re on the look for a nice button assignment you may consider the CyberJump feature. When pushing a button assigned to the CyberJump feature you can stop a web page loading, display the previous one, bookmark it, open the favorites menu, etc. But you can also display the start menu, instantly position the cursor on one of the lifts shown in the current application and even display all the menus of your current applications in one single contextual menu. Best of all if you assign the CyberJump technology to the wheel mouse button you can keep the wheel button performing double click. ( A single push of the wheel will make double click for you, while a longer push will show the CyberJump set of commands.) Finally with the Mouseware drivers you can obviously change the number of lines the wheel scrolls (since the wheel is universal, it works in every application except if you enable the Office 97 compatibility mode).

   
Logitech MouseMan Traveler Settings (click to enlarge)

Tests

   During our tests, we used the Logitech MouseMan Traveler day to day with an array of applications. The most critical applications were Adobe PhotoShop 6, Adobe Illustrator  10 and Corel Draw! 10. All these programs require highly accurate pointing devices to perform precise operations like photos, touch up and drawing. The MouseMan Traveler greatly adapted to these requirements by giving great results with these applications. Logitech’s device was clearly more accurate than the embedded touchpad of our laptop. Over the weeks the Logitech MouseMan Traveler became the essential companion of our laptop. The MouseMan Traveler features a small USB cable, since you don’t need a long cable when using the mouse with a laptop. Nonetheless Logitech provides a USB extension cable if you need a longer cable for whatever reasons.