If it gets to the point where we have to pay a monthly fee to use computer peripherals I’m going to dedicate all my spare time to making open source alternatives. Become ungovernable.
There’s already plenty of open source alternatives. Mouse drivers are relatively simple.
corporate brain rot
Luckily I can buy a perfectly decent mouse that lasts forever for £5
Lol I actually had to check to make sure this wasn’t published on April 1st. Missed joke opportunity, this is hilarious
I really hope there aren’t people stupid enough to buy or even want that.
Oh man I was hoping this would be a sub for alternatives to subscriptions, rather than just pointing out that everything is going to a subscription model.
It’s not against the rules of that community to post alternatives. I suspect the community members would love that.
Alternative to subscription based mouse…any other fucking mouse. Hell, I’d rather use that piece of crap they sell at walgreens for $15.99. It looks like crap, has only 2 buttons, is wired, but it doesn’t have a damn subscription.
are mice not supposed to have only 2 buttons??? (excluding scroll wheel)
Oh neat, I think I might subscribe to that community.
Wait a goddamned minute
My Halo account name is fuckmandatorysignins@personalDomain.com
Fuck you Microsoft, fuck you Logitech, if the Internet goes down, I’m fucked…
I always give “companyname@personaldomain.com”
That way datasets are harder to correlate and I know who leaked 😝
That’s what I’ve been doing since 2002. If I get spam, I set up a forward to their customer service.
Lol! I need to start doing something like this when one of those email addresses eventually ends up in a breach. :D
Be wary though, it might get your domain blacklisted for spam. I’ve been lucky so far.
I’ll pass
Well that means I need to find a new mouse because of them even suggesting this crap. I really like my MX Master. Beefy with some weight.
Or just buy 4-5 now and last the next decade.
Shame there’s no a mechanical mouse movement to create an industry of high quality alternatives we can buy.
I will learn to build a mouse and write my own damn drivers first.
I actually know how to do this off the top of my head and you don’t need to write a driver for it, you could simply use an Arduino Micro.
The Micro (and other Arduino-compatible Atmel ATMEGA 32u4-based microcontrollers) have native USB support so they have a library you can import that will work with generic USB keyboard/mouse drivers. It would be up to you to rig up the sensors and buttons, make a case and write a little firmware.
Coming from the same side as you, in my experience just about any microcontroller that includes USB hardware support (which is very common even in the stupidly cheap ones) has software support for acting as a mouse or keyboard, not just via the Arduino framework but also in the manufacturer’s libraries.
This is because the comms for that stuff in USB is an USB standard called USB HID (stands for Human Interface Device) which works not just for mice and keyboards but also for stuff like joysticks, game controllers and so on.
Meanwhile on the computer side, also because of all of this being standardized, support comes include in the OS and no drivers are needed. In fact even back in Windows 7 when you might need to install a driver, all that the “driver” was, was a text file telling the OS to, for a USB device with a specific ID (USB devices identify themselves using a two number code), use the OS’ built-in USB HID support.
Nowadays the difficult part in making a good mouse or a keyboard is the mechanical side, not the hardware or software.
Unsurprisingly you can buy a basic mouse for 2 bucks from places like Aliexpress that’s actually decent and reliable.
I really have no clue how Logitech expects to get away with this idea of theirs. Maybe they intend to leverage Brand loyalty for it?
Yeah what Arduino brings to the table is easily purchasable electronics and reference material/tutorials written for middle schoolers and not electrical engineers to understand. They invent basically nothing but make things more accessible.
The thing I would need to do the most googling on is the actual XY sensor. I don’t know off the top of my head how available an optical mouse sensor is, or if you’d have to build a ball mouse, etc. I have occasionally played with USB HIDs but never for anything legitimate.
Nice! Thank you!
lmfao. At one point the Logitech mouse driver for MacOS was a 1GB download. They want me to pay for that shit??? gtfo.
It was a mouse driver in a windows XP VM. Really saves on development costs that way.
Hilarious. Logitech’s software has always been an afterthought and now they want me to pay for it? Goooo fuck yourselves. I had to sell a perfectly good keyboard and mouse because their stupid g-hub is harder to navigate than a g-spot.
It kept doing updates and every time it did, it would clobber all my macros and bindings and basically factory reset. I had a txt document on my desktop with all my configs so I could set them back up whenever it decided the configuration gods required a sacrifice.
I started boycotting them when they started forcing a program to be downloaded, installed and run automatically on any pc running Windows 10 just by plugging a Logitech mouse/keyboard in to the USB port.
It installes through Windows Update, and is called Logitech Download Helper.
I am fine with Windows Update supplying and installing drivers, but using it to deploy program is scummy…
So now, I am on Xtrfy mice and Ducky keyboards.
G-hub also doesn’t work on Linux, which is actually a massive advantage. I use Solaar with a couple of shell scripts and it’s amazing.
G Hub doesn’t work with my old trusty G11 keyboard either. Since it’s both required for Logitech’s newer peripherals and also requires uninstalling the old Logitech Gaming Software which would reduce the functionality of my keyboard, it effectively banishes any future consideration for Logitech’s peripherals.
It’s basically moot since I run Linux now, but I don’t fancy the quality of Logitech’s products either these days. It’s a shame since their stuff used to be really solid. My X540 speakers are as old as my keyboard (16 years) and also refuse to die.
…I feel sorry for your girlfriend/wife.
My girlfriend doesn’t have one, teehee 🤭
Go on, tell us how you work the spot, G Man.
You basically have to go behind the clitoris and stimulate it from the back while working it from the front with your tongue.
Our boys dick looks like the lower case letter ‘u’ well done
Damn you got a lucky mouse
Almost spat out my food, thanks
🤷♂️ My girl just lays on top of me and rides up and down along me, and that seems to do the trick. Not every time, mind you. But that’s the position that does it, if it happens.
Which is freaking great for me because I love that position. 🤤 Lots of skin on skin.
For hours.
Hours! Then you ain’t hittin’ it, son.
An idea for a mouse I will never buy in a million years
Wait is this an onion?
Arent mouse already “forever” mice. Like what goes wrong in them? I’ve never had a wired laser mouse fail, and the batteries ones I usually lose the adapter or let it corrode before the mouse actually fails
And if anything I only buy a new mouse for aesthetics. Or when their old mouse is grody
I’ve had buttons stop working. The mechanism inside that registers the click is a mechanical switch and they eventually die
I had the wheel button stop working on it once, it was still usable, just annoying, when I needed to do a middle click.
Also that happened after a decade of use.
By “forever” they mean you will be paying them forever for the privilege of using the mouse. Unless you break it that is, or they feel like they no longer want to support it at which point it will likely become a forever brick.
The switches eventually fail, but most mice use the same Omron switches and they are easy enough to replace if you know how to solder. The teflon skates wear out too, but you can find replacement for most name brand mice online.
Or when their old mouse is grody
That’s planned obsolescence. They cover the mouse in soft touch plastic that turns to glue in 5 years. It ensures that you buy a new mouse every 5 years while claiming they are reliable.
I read that acetone transforms the gluely soft touch coating to hard plastic. I did it to my old Logitech when it got grody and it is still not grody after 20 years.
They cover the mouse in soft touch plastic that turns to glue in 5 years
This is my pet peeve of modern electronics in general. Even my $3000 work-supplied Dell laptop is coated in this soft touch material that will inevitably turn into a gooey mess after a few years 🤦♂️
Also own a second-hand tablet computer that feels disgusting and sticky to hold because the soft touch coating has degraded so badly on it 😭
I fixed a bunch of ThinkPad laptops that were turning into sticky messes, I put a movie on, used a whole bunch of goo off and stripped all of the sticky plastic off of the devices. Now they feel great
Yes, mice are forever mice. That’s the problem, it’s just a one time sell.
Ask a razer user if their mouse/keyboard last forever.
To be fair they only said having a subscription for the accompanying software was a ‘possibility’, not that it would need one, and that it would be likely to be in the ~$200 price range, and with upgradeability and repairability in mind, as well as reliant on software updates.
Honestly depending on how much they lean toward the subscription and/or software update reliance having a mouse designed to last a lifetime and be upgradeable and repairable would be nice, even at a rather higher price point.
I already pay a subscription when I have to keep buying the hardware designed to break. I don’t think I’ve ever had a middle mouse button working for long.
It’s so much bullshit and it’s getting shittier.
I don’t understand what you all are doing with your mice. I’ve had mine for years, and the one before it, years. I only changed because I wanted to upgrade, too.
Meanwhile I’m always on Discord with my buddy complaining that his mouse broke, again. This mf fingers must weigh a fk ton bruh.
lots of people smack their mice on the table out of rage.
Do that a lot, and they will not last very long
I wish it were my unmanageable rage, but it’s usually a regular old click that does them in. Maybe I have superhuman strength in my index finger and haven’t noticed it.
If it’s a G502/702, they’ve got a very fucky scroll wheel & middle click; it’s actually a lemon, but since nothing else works with the wireless pads they’re the only options.
I just like to middle-click things. I opened a Logitech mouse once and found out that the bridge that presses the button internally is way thinner than a toothpick and my frail little fingers are stronger than it for inexplicable reasons. :(
I can vouch for that. For me it’s the scroll wheel.
I’ve been through a Logitech G703 and a Corsair Sabre Pro and both failed the same way. I’ve also seen it happen to a Razer Deathadder Essential. The shitty mechanical encoder goes janky after a few months and basically makes scrolling unusable, as scrolling the mouse wheel either doesn’t get detected or is interpreted as going the opposite direction. Yeah they can be ‘fixed’ by either blasting air into it which sometimes works for a bit or worst case, soldering on a replacement encoder, but even that’s just a temporary fix as it’s only a matter of time before that fails too. I can’t deal with unreliability like that.
Older mice more commonly used to use optical encoders which tend to last much longer but finding a new mouse with an optical encoder isn’t as easy. I finally broke down and got a Zowie the other day which should hold up a bit better in theory and only time will tell. I feel silly spending so much on a mouse, but I just want one that works.
It’s so much bullshit and it’s getting shittier.
Unclear if you’re talking about technology, or life.
Hmm… yes.
I miss when they had good hardware for a reasonable price. Some of my cheap original Logitech laser mice are still going, almost 2 decades later. Obviously not super heavy use as the switches have not worn out, but they’ve been shifted about the house as other mice break. So certainly not 0 use either.
The tasks have been things like our old media centre mouse died, the old Logi mouse “temporarily” replaced it until we replaced the media centre. It’s not been unused any longer than a few months at a time.
We tried buying some recently but the new ones are all optical so they had shit performance and died after maybe 3 months of light use.
