I purchased a G500, and I wanted to voice my love for (most aspects of) its scroll wheel design:
- The button to switch between standard scroll and the "hyper-scroll" mode is very handy.
- The flywheel-like weighting of the wheel. Even when it's in standard scroll mode, a quick motion lets the wheel turn through several "bumps," without using the hyperscroll mode.
- Even after well over two months of use/abuse, the scroll wheel isn't showing any signs of wear.
- The ability to use the scroll wheel as extra buttons is always nice.
- The middle-click is far easier to use than on previous mice, though it does still require more pressure than is comfortable. Middle click on the G5 was awful - it required a great deal of pressure to even trigger it, and doing so would almost always result in hitting one of the side-movement buttons on the scrollwheel.
Downside of the wheel: It's recessed into the mouse more than on the G5, making it a bit more of a strain to move it sideways.
- Buttons: More (programmable, well-placed) buttons are a good.
Ergonomics: Palm-down mice cause arm pain. Simple as that. The much-praised "handshake" position is where it's at. I'm among a growing population of users who are at a computer 8hrs a day, every day. (And some of us would love to get in some computer gaming time when we get home...if only my wrist and fingers didn't ache so much.) Incidentally, gaming mice seem to be well-suited for things like CAD work, for those of us who can't get something like a specialized $300 3D mouse.
I was going to look at getting the M570 trackball, but too many reports (and user videos) of a squeaky scroll wheel, a sign of poor build quality, swayed me away from purchasing it. The G500's scroll wheel is excellent, and my thought is that it should be duplicated in other products as well. (What I'm getting at is, will there ever be a variant of the M570 that integrates the G500's scroll wheel mechanism and tilt button functionality, and perhaps with a more upright tilt to the overall body?)
