Logitech, iFixit to offer parts to stop folks binning their computer mouse Peripherals maker Logitech has struck a deal with repair outfit iFixit to begin selling components and repair guides for some models of computer mice. From the beginning of northern hemisphere summer, parts for Logitech mice will be available through iFixit's Logitech Repair Hub, but only for the Logitech MX Master and MX …
Not many mice make it past their fifth birthday
I get that's a more general statement, but given it's mentioned in the article I will say that my 3 year old MX Master 3 is just starting to bed in nicely, I expect it to last many more than another 2 years. The MX700 it replaced was about 10 years old, and that only got replaced as it became a pain to charge.
I did also once tip a glass of coke over it too, carefully took it to bits and cleaned it with isopropyl and it's still going strong.
I expect it'll be the battery that goes first, it's now down to a couple of weeks charge (with about 8 hours use a day), so knowing replacements are available is a boon. (I like to go OEM with things that hold a lot of energy near my extremities).
I agree. As a result of Luke Lafreniere's review of the Hyperion Fury (G402) eight years ago, I bought one, and then bought another, and another... I think I have six now and I don't believe one has died yet. Or possibly one where the cable went (as the braided cables were reserved for the G502) ... I have them on my main system KVM, another on my gaming station and another in my laptop bag. When they started to become hard to get, I got another two or three (checks spares box) ... yes, three. Great mice for the money. Love them to bits. Literally :-) ... if only the software came on Linux... (cough, cough)
I have bought several Logitech M705s (they are a nice size and shape) over a decade - the weak link being the micro-switches which eventually become erratically responsive.
I did once watch a YouTube guide on how to carefully extract the switch and tweak the spring back to the right shape so that it would work again. Then I did that. Which rendered the mouse fully inoperative, then I bought a new one.
I was wondering about this and whether what is being captured here is the standard refresh cycle where complete systems ie. Keyboard, moue, monitor, system unit and all cables are replaced.
From a reuse and refurbishment viewpoint, mice and keyboards tend to be discarded as they generally have wear marks and will contain a build up of user skin residues and other muck. Also, I have written off many wireless mice because they have been separated from their factory paired usb dongle.
Not sure I've ever replaced a mouse because it stopped working.... I tend to replace them because the next new/better/shinier one comes along.
(Having said that, I don't use mice, I prefer Trackballs, and there's a limited number on the market, but they tend to all be reasonably good)
> They are a lot easier to clean than keyboards
Just fiddly getting them CoViD clean ie. Disassemble to get at the muck accumulated under the wheel and then reassembling as a working mouse. A set of HP keyboards (forget model number) disassembled where the circuit board could be removed and the plastic put in the dishwasher (I didn’t know this until I had to get a office worth of keyboards and mice CoViD clean).
Still using the MX510 I bought, if not in its year of release, then shortly thereafter, so it must be getting on for 17-18 years of regular use.
The rubberised coating down the sides has worn completely back to smooth plastic except in those areas beyond the reach of my fingers when holding the mouse normally, the Logitech badge on the top and the legends on the additional buttons have all worn away leaving them blank, and (in a nod to the topic of this article) a few years ago I had to replace the original pads on the underside with third-party replacements. ISTR also opening it up about 5-6 years ago to clean out all the crud that'd managed to accumulate inside the casing leading to excess friction when moving the scroll wheel - we might not need to clean our balls these days, but the other mechanical parts of our rodents do still benefit from the occasional bit of TLC to keep them operating nicely...
Cosmetic wear and tear and need for occasional cleaning aside though, it's still working just as well as it did the day it arrived, so I'll be rather sad when it does eventually start to fail in ways that aren't so easy/cost-effective to work around, because it's easily the best mouse I've ever used since the day I first saw one attached to a computer back in the early-ish 80's.
I was always a huge fan of the MX Master. Large, form-fitting, weighty, smooth, excellent features, all for a killer price. I've since moved to the Razer Basilisk v3 for its amazing sensor and similar features to the Master, at the cost of ergonomics unfortunately! DeathAdder for the backpack for its dongle and Bluetooth compatibility, but same concerns about ergonomics.
I think the Master may still be my favorite traditional mouse of all time—if only the sensor were better...
And of course it goes without saying Razer's garbageware goes right in the bin designated for it. Logitech's offerings may not be excellent themselves last time I used them some years ago, but anything is better than Synapse.
As 3D printers become more advanced, reliable and easier to use it would be wonderful to think that more companies embrace the kind of thing that Edelkrone does with this
https://edelkrone.com/products/flextilt-head-3d
I expect there are other companies out there which offer download of stl files for printing but I've not come across any recently. Where I work a couple of us "design" replacement parts for things to keep them going. Things like battery covers, knobs and buttons etc. get broken or get lost and render equipment unusable without a little extruded piece of PLA!
Think of the great PR glow in which a company could bathe if it announced self-printable replacement parts.
I'll get my knitted trunks for a paddle.
"Think of the great PR glow in which a company could bathe if it announced self-printable replacement parts."
Until someone points out how few people have 3D printers (or even access to one) how much they cost, how much the part will actually cost to make etc., :-)
Maybe when you can pop down to the equivalent of the local photobooth, hardware shop or other retailer and run one off for pennies and making sure they use the right kind of material for the part (rigid, flexible etc)
Great for handy hobbyists, less so for mainstream and, where the vast majority of broken mice, keyboards, headsets, webcams etc come from, mainstream businesses and offices where the time cost alone for someone to process the order is magnitudes more than just replacing it anyway,
"Until someone points out how few people have 3D printers (or even access to one) how much they cost, how much the part will actually cost to make etc., :-)"
You might be surprised how many people have them. Of course I see them all over the place since I'm an engineer and have plenty of nerdy friends. My Anet ET4 cost me around $100. It was a factory return and as near as I can tell, somebody didn't set it up correctly, gave up and sent it back. Once I got it dialed in, it's worked a treat ever since. I need to find uses for all of the empty filament reels. I've been keeping the "off-cuts" sorted by color and maybe someday I'll build or buy an extruder and recast my scrap.
Many public libraries have 3d printers now—two universities near me have printers for students and staff use for next to nothing as far as cost goes (subsidized by tuition fees I assume), with dedicated staff to help with them as part of their respective media centers. It's far more common and possible to make use of 3d printing than you make it out to be.
Or, hell, if price is less of a concern, just order it online from any of the 3d printing companies. Their fit and finish may be even better than what you can get locally, and most of them will offer professional support for newbies.
Not in the UK. If anything, libraries are closing or reducing services. There ain't a university in every town and even if there were I doubt they'd offer use to the general public. Even ordinary printing is charged to students at 5p per page (I think they get a "free" monthly allowance of about £10 or so, depends on the university. On the other hand, one of our companies services is providing managed print services and IIRC 5p per page is what we charge our customers to cover amortise the printer cost and maintenance as well as make a healthy profit, so I suspect UK universities are not in any way subsidising normal paper print cost, let alone any kind of 3D print facility. I suspect that will limited to students in departments that actually have a need for 3D printers.
On the other hand, I take your point that they are available in some places as well as online. I was simply pointing out that they are not as easily available as some people seem to think, there seemed to be an implication that many people own 3D printers at home. They are still pretty niche items, but have there own little communities, like in the early 8-bit home computing days, so people who do own one know lots of other people who also own one, which may skew the perception.
"There ain't a university in every town and even if there were I doubt they'd offer use to the general public."
There are sometimes tech centers you can join that have a workshop full of tools. Good luck getting time on the 3D printers. In smaller towns the best bet is to be active in the community so you know people that might have one or more likely, their kid has one, who can make your part for a good price (very little overhead). There was a Maker space near me, but it wasn't run very well and got folded up.
I don't own one, but I know at least 3 places I could go right now to use one (public library in city center, university library's media center, friend of a friend). Maybe it's more common in the US. I am not in a particularly modern area either, with lots of my state covered in farmland.
I'm an active user at Thingiverse. It's, of course, much easier to just download a file to print a replacement part, but if I can't find one and make one on my own, I post it. It's not like it would be worth it to sell something like a battery cover on eBay, so I really don't care. I've also made loads of brackets, holders, mounts for photo gear and all sorts of other stuff besides repair parts that many others have also found useful. I include the CAD files since it's handy to be able to make changes, improvements or corrections if it's posted. I just wish more people would do that and stick to industry standard formats.
iFixit's UK store is pretty bare. Just compare the categories with iFixit.com. And I think US sellers generally halted shipping to the UK when the UK decided to harmonise it's small items import rules about VAT collection with the EU's new rules on 1 January 2021.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/changes-to-vat-treatment-of-overseas-goods-sold-to-customers-from-1-january-2021/changes-to-vat-treatment-of-overseas-goods-sold-to-customers-from-1-january-2021
Deeply ironic as we left the EU one day beforehand.
PS HMRC wanted the link in triplicate but it wouldn't fit in the browser.
"According to the United Nations Global E-waste Monitor's 2020 report, the most recent version, a record 53.6 metric tons of electronic waste was generated globally in 2019, up 21 percent in just five years."
53.6 metric tons of e-waste world wide annually?
No problem.
Somebody at El Reg should read the report.
And correct the story to add in 'million'.
53.6 million tons annually = problem
Gave me chronic RSI, grasping whilst moving your wrist/elbow joints is a bad combination. Switched to a track ball, much better. Then WFH happened and all I use now is the Apple trackpad. Even better for me and the planet. Its at least 10 years old and is unlikely to wear out any time soon (no moving parts).
Not sure why this got downvotes. The trackpad (with gestures) is so much more functional and productive than a normal mouse.
Although to appease the Apple haters, let’s not overlook one of the all-time bonehead mouse design decisions… the Magic Mouse with charging port underneath, rendering it completely inoperable when you invariably forgot to charge it.
While I can agree that the mouse may be perhaps not the best input device, I really can't get on with touch-pads of any flavour (though large ones with a stylus work reasonably well).
Even using a laptop on the move I prefer to have a mouse on my knee than use the inbuilt touchpad. (Also, why are they invariably set to 'inverted' whenever I do find one?)
In the good old days when trackpads literally were *just* that, and if you wanted to do a left or right click then you'd have to tap one of the discrete buttons above/below the pad area, I was quite happy to use them instead of having to take a mouse with me wherever my laptop went.
Then, for reasons that I assume were driven entirely by someone in the marketing or product styling department who didn't stop to consider the utterly trivial aspects of useability, reliability etc and were solely focused on how nice it looked, we started to get those perfectly decent and entirely functional trackpad+button combinations replaced with the awful all in one clickpad.
I've lost count of how many different clickpads I've attempted to use across a wide range of different laptop manufacturers since their introduction, but I can say with absolute certainty that the number I've been able to continue using with enough success to make them useable for me is a big fat zero. Every single one of the damn things seems to have a mind of its own regarding where it thinks my fingertip is, where it's moving to or where it's just moved from, either failing to track my movements at all, or randomly deciding to reposition the mouse pointer halfway across the screen even if my fingertip has remained stationary on the pad. And don't then get me started on how reliably the clicking action behaves - push down in the lower-left corner expecting to get a left click, nope. Push a bit harder, nope. Push slightly further to the right, nope. Bit further and bingo! But then fail to learn where this impossibly precisely located sweet spot is for generating a left click action, move slightly too far to the right, and oh poo, I've just right-clicked instead... And then, once you've finally mastered which sliver of the clicking edge you need to use to reliably generate a left or right click, good luck trying to maintain that if you then need to generate a click+drag operation. Hateful things, every last one of them.
So yes, count me in as a fellow mouser even if I'm using a laptop as an actual *lap*top as opposed to it just being docked to my office workstation setup. Wonder how long it'll take before there are enough of us out there for laptop manufacturers to spot an opening in the market for laptops that don't have any sort of built in pointing device...
How about just using standard AA batteries to power their mice, like most cheap Chinese wireless mice and keyboards? Eventually their custom LiPo or Li-Ion batteries stocks will run out. Standard AA batteries will almost certainly be available in fifty or even a hundred years.
Also, replacement switches are much more urgent than batteries since they're the parts most likely to fail.
"I dislike AAA rechargeable batteries unless the mouse can, like a cordless DECT handset, be rested in a charging cradle."
I use Eneloop rechargeables and the ones from Ikea which might be the same and they are great. A docking cradle is fine, but that will often mean the mouse contains batteries that are soldered in or that they are only available from specialist suppliers when they won't charge anymore. I'd rather have AAA's as I can find them everywhere or rob batteries from a remote in a pinch.
> but that will often mean the mouse contains batteries that are soldered in
What I found surprising was how many of these battery packs were just AAA batteries soldered and wrappered together into a single pack
My issue with AAA rechargeables has been finding some that can maintain a useable amount of charge for a reasonable length of time. If you’ve been used to using decent heavy duty AAA batteries in your mouse and remotes, it is noticeable irritating how quickly rechargeables discharge.
Firstly, make sure you're using low-discharge-rate rechargeables (aka hybrid, pre-charged, or Enerloops after the company who introduced, or at least popularised, the tech). They don't give you quite as much energy capacity as a standard NiMH rechargeable, so they're not as useful in devices where you can take them off charge just before use, and then thrash them over the course of a few hours/days (e.g. using them to power a camera whilst taking photos all day at an event).
However, for devices like remotes, mice etc. where the device itself only sips energy from the battery bit by bit and where you're expecting a set of batteries to therefore last several months/years, their much lower self discharge rate means they retain significantly more of the stored energy for the device to use over that timescale, rather than (as with a standard rechargeable) throwing most of it away itself within the first few weeks after being taken off charge.
Secondly, once you've done the above, make sure your batteries come from reputable sources - don't just believe the headline capacity figures quoted by some of them. Whilst there's no need to pay the premium for well known brand names, you should be wary of going too far the other way and over-economising, ending up with batteries which may be some way removed from their advertised characteristics.
Thirdly, don't always believe a device when it's telling you the batteries are low if you're using rechargeables instead of alkalines - many devices base their low battery warnings on how alkaline batteries behave during use, i.e. the voltage across each battery dropping fairly steadily from 1.5V as the battery discharges, such that they might start to warn around a low battery level once the voltage drops to around 1.1-1.2V.
The problem here is that NiMH rechargeables only deliver around 1.2V when fully charged, but then hold a far steadier voltage almost up to the point where they're fully discharged, so some devices may flag them up as being "low" almost from the moment you fit them, even though they'll actually still work just fine for however long you were expecting them to work. e.g. based on how long it's been since my wireless mouse first started warning me about low batteries (it's running off a couple of low-discharge NiMH AA's), I'd be forgiven for thinking it must now be running on thin air given that I've yet to replace them...
I've never been that put out by having a corded mouse on my office machines. I do have a small wireless mouse in my laptop bag and it uses AAA's.
I have found some of the microswitches used in mice but mostly I get them out of donors I've picked up for next to nothing at estate sales. If you need a switch for a Logitech mouse, chances are pretty good they've used that same switch in all sorts of other models too so they can buy them by the container load for the best price. I think it was M$ that was contracting Logitech for M$ branded mice at some point. I know there are far fewer makers than there are brands so having a box of misc mice might yield any parts you need. The mouse that fits me the best so far is a Logitech M-U0007 and with nearly no big computer stores around any more that have an aisle full of mice to test for fit, I want to keep what I have going for as long as possible.
Logitech and others use 5V 100mA rated switches at 3.3V. The corresponding lower operating current allows oxidation to build up, leading to more bounces. Eventually, things get so bad the firmware is no longer able to detect a single click.
So, if you do feel adventurous: the switches have a cover that can be removed with some fiddling (keep tabs on the "button" - it is not attached to anything.) A couple of light passes with very fine sandpaper over the contact area will remove the oxidation and the buttons will work as normal again.
And in spirit of TFA: Asus RoG mice have replaceable switches and come with a spare pair (and other assorted wear parts.)
I realize the IFixIt/Logitech store is still getting organized, but...
As of today there are about 3 parts available: "Parts Batteries (2) Feet (2) Screws (2)"
The use-case for screws is 'stripped lower case screws'. Duh, mouse screws do not strip, mouse BODIES strip. Steel rips poly-plastic. (And not if you are gentle.)
And they want FIFTEEN DOLLARS for FOUR SCREWS!!! OK, maybe that will include shipping.... but does it really make sense to send the big UPS truck to my house for four screws?
As said, the light-loaded switches grow tarnish. In my youth I would gladly suck solder and replace switches. That stuff became drudgery (and my fingers and eyes got blunt); 99% of the world would never de-solder a switch. So that's not a realistic repair part. Wheels don't have to break, the designers just don't care. (Or understand they owe continued employment to throw-away design.)
And even using a mouse 14 hours a day, I just can't feature the $60-$120 being asked for Brand Name mice, which are honestly $15 products at most. Some no-name $4 mice can be equal of more expensive rodents, even long-term. I have a lot of mouse-miles on an Amazon Basics no-frill mouse.
This is picayune. Our mines are not emptying, our dumps are not filling, with mice carcasses. JD tractors. My new Toyota. THAT's where Right To Repair matters.
I'm sat here using my 20 yr old Microsoft Intellimouse Optical.
Given to me by a tech friend at work who could get used to it, it's survived a redundancy, two jobs, a return back to my original employer and about 12 office moves since. It's a lovely faded 'smkoers yellow' and the surface as become shiny through repeated use but otherwise it's good as.
I also quickly Googled it and there's some very optimistic pricing out there for these things used!
The microswitches are the weakest link. The only reason I have needed feet/pads is because the do double duty as screw covers. If I did not disturb them to access the screws to rejuvenate the microswitches, I think they would last far longer.
The switches may be rated at 5v but most of the mice I see use a single AA battery = 1.5V - even worse for keeping the contacts clean.
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