I ordered a new keyboard and mouse for work and I decided to get the Logitech 5500 MX Combo after a little bit of research. I did want some of the experience to be a surprise so I basically checked to make sure they would both work with Linux and they did minus the small LCD screen on the keyboard (not a big deal for me). I’ve been using them for a couple days now and here are something of the things that I didn’t expect.

The Good
The mouse has a feature with the scroll wheel where if you press it down far enough, it “unlocks” the wheel so instead of the typical behavior of a mouse where it clicks as you scroll, it enters a free-spin mode where I can basically spin the mouse-wheel and remove my finger while the wheel will continue to spin until it loses momentum. Kinda cool and useful for some of the longer tickets that get passed my way at work. The mouse also has more buttons than I know what to do with so I have to look at how I want to remap many of them.

The LCD screen doesn’t show all the things it can when you’re running linux, but it does have a keypress counter so I can literally see how many characters I’ve typed every day, not really useful but neat.

I LOVE how quiet the keyboard is, I’m a bit sensitive to sound and this keyboard is awesomely quiet.

It’s very comfortable which is something I was hoping would turn out to be true since I went to 5 stores that claimed to have them in stock and couldn’t actually find one to try, so I had to order it on-line from Tiger Direct.

The Bad
So far the biggest problem which is a biggie for me until I decide on my work around is that nearly ALL ways you would normally paste from your clipboard/buffer have been altered in some way. Clicking the scroll wheel does not result in a paste, clicking both mouse buttons does but I don’t like the idea of wearing out two buttons when one will do.

The insert key has moved, up to the same row as the function keys, WTF? I have to remap this somehow because that’s killing me, since they changed the layout of where home, delete, pgdn,pgup,etc. normally are I will probably remap the home key to insert because I can’t think of any time I use the home key.

Overall I’m in love with the new gear and I’m very happy with the purchase but I do wish I had known about the insert key/mouse paste before I might have kept looking awhile longer.