I reviewed the Mouse Bungee in July, 1999. And it wasn't brand new then. It's got to be ten years old by now.
It's been on sale at Aus PC Market for all of that time. They're still using the crunchy product pic I took with my DC120 in 1999, too.
And now it's on special, yours (if you live in Australia) for $AU19.80 delivered! That's only slightly more than half what it cost when I first reviewed it!
Australian shoppers can click here to order one.
(It's too late for Christmas, though. AusPC go on holiday after Monday the 22nd of December, and they've already shipped their last 2008 orders; you can order stuff whenever you like, but your order will be charged and dispatched in January. AusPC also find it annoying when I tell people to buy things that're on special. So, uh, buy some other stuff, while you're there. I suggest you get a Core i7 PC, plus a spare in case you scratch the first one.)
If you, like me, still have a mouse with a cord, the good old Mouse Bungee really is not a bad solution to the cord-tugs-on-mouse problem.
All you really need to do to deal with that problem, of course, is to tape the cord to your desk at an appropriate point, or attach it to a heavy thing. WireWeights were the fanciest way of doing that second trick, but the company disappeared a couple of years after I reviewed their product in 2004.
The Mouse Bungee people and their surprisingly useful sproing-y product are still very much alive, though.
(Regrettably, the Batterylife Activator people have also vanished. You can still buy a Wine Clip, though, and I'm pretty sure the EMPower Modulator is still on the market, too.)
20 December 2008 at 6:32 am
I have a ziptie around my mouse cord and the ziptie is stapled under my table. Old table, cheap solution.
20 December 2008 at 9:58 am
Since recently reverting to wired technology* I was half expecting my hand to fall off and all my dreams to fail due to the tug of the cable. Then I realised that I could just plug the mouse into the USB hub on my desk (insert keyboard/monitor/other random USB hub container) rather than trailing it under to the back of the PC and so have plenty of cable with nowhere to drag downwards to. Get some slack and make a bit of a loop of cord a few inches from the mouse end and it feels about the same as a wireless mouse. That said I've always rode my wireless mice bareback on the wooden table so obviously I'm not opposed to some slight friction while moving my pointing device about.
*In a case of 'Logitech hates Vista users or old customers', removing the support for their older mice from their Vista compatible driver has left anyone with an MX700 stuck on XP or hacking together a Vista32 workaround. Vista x64 has no such workaround so your 8 button mouse** only has 5 buttons visible to Vista and you can't rebind them to keyboard modifiers.
While the gamers' favourite (back when it was reasonably new) MX700 and wired brother, the MX500, are both out of luck, Logitech would be more than willing to sell you a completely-compatible-with-Vista-x64 MX518 which looks identical to the MX500 but with some new paint and a slightly better sensor. How about a G5 Laser mouse? Similar body but with new internals and again Vista support for configuring buttons and all that jazz. Some might say they're using the Vista driver change to force upgrades for the folks who only get a new toy when the old one breaks. Unfortunately, it's a tactic that works. I couldn't find an alternative brand that make a mouse with similar functionality and form so downgraded to a wired edition of the mouse I already have to unlock the functionality of it under Vista x64.
**Yes, I do find it useful to have that many buttons. Several years of shift and ctrl being on my right thumb in games and even the desktop is habit forming (in fact I don't know how I'd be able to manage action bars in WoW without it) and moving less used but important functions like 'bring up full map' and 'torch on/off' to above/below the scroll wheel keeps my WASD space clear in more button heavy FPS (leaning round corners being the main culprit for cutting down on the natural selection of left hand keys available without glancing down).
20 December 2008 at 11:13 am
Heh. I have an MX518. I feel lost without the back and forward buttons under my left thumb.
20 December 2008 at 12:49 pm
I still have all three of the bungees I purchased based on your original review. One started out on a 200 MHz K6-2 with 128 megs of RAM, and is currently tethered to a machine with eight cores and eight gigs.
There's something almost ... appealing about how ugly they are (referring here to the old beige one with the square nose and the little metal nameplate). Looks like something my dad would design.
WIRED MICE 4 LIFE.
20 December 2008 at 4:29 pm
Waitwaitwaitwait...The pull of the cable is a real issue? I've never even noticed it except when it's gotten caught on something and I don't do anything with mine other than let it drape whereever it wants to go.