(LIFESTYLE) TOTAL CONTROL AT A FLICK OF YOUR WRIST By Paul Taylor
Friday, August 17, 2007
Computer mice come in many shapes and guises but Logitech's MX Air is one of the first actually designed to “fly”. At £100, the rechargeable wireless MX Air, due to launch in Europe early next month, is one of the more expensive PC navigation devices, but also one of the best and most innovative I have ever used and is particularly suited to the multimedia enthusiast.
Straight out of the box, it is apparent that the MX Air is no ordinary rodent. It has a sleek black-and-silver design, and when you turn it on, a series of amber-illuminated buttons that control special functions stretches out along the device's “backbone”. These buttons, which include play/pause, volume, select and back buttons, enable the MX Air to be used as a remote control anywhere up to 30ft away from the “home” PC, using reliable radio waves rather than infrared signals that require line-of-sight.
Its other striking feature is the lack of a traditional “scroll” wheel, designed to enable users to move quickly up and down a web page or a document. Where you would normally expect to find one, the MX Air features an elongated scroll panel. I found this finger-operated pad, complete with audible clicking, at least as fast and much easier to use than a conventional scroll wheel.
But as its name implies, the MX Air really shines when you lift it up off the desktop. Logitech (www.logitech.com) is not the first PC peripheral maker to design a gyroscopic navigation device; Gyration (www.gyration.com) were pioneers in the US with a series of gyroscope-based mice and presentation tools priced from $70 and up. But the design and technology of the MX Air has set a new benchmark by which to judge other gyroscopic-based navigation devices.
Just like the movement-sensing controller that comes with Nintendo's Wii video games console, the MX Air adds another dimension to PC navigation. Working in conjunction with software that you install on the PC, it uses Hillcrest Lab's “Freespace” motion-sensing technology to enable users to navigate virtually any PC-based media with intuitive wave-and-click controls. Despite my initial doubts, I easily managed to master the “gesture controls”: these enable you to control playback and volume with hand motions, to adjust volume by waving to the right or left, or skip tracks with a flick of the wrist. I found the slight delay when you lift it from the desktop to be slightly annoying, but once airborne it performed flawlessly.
Logitech has clearly put a lot of thought into the design the MX Air. For example, to make it easier to see the cursor when it is “in flight” and you step or lean back from the screen, the cursor automatically switches to a slightly larger and darker variant.
Logitech has also developed on-screen menus for 11 of the most popular multimedia programs, including Apple's iTunes, Windows Media Player and Adobe's Photoshop Album, and for web browsers, including Internet Explorer and Netscape. While not quite perfect, the MX Air is an impressive device that PC owners should consider if looking for the ultimate rodent upgrade.
[用户系统信息]Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
