Darice de Cuba

Last year I bought the Logitech Revolution VX to use with my Mac Mini setup. I chose the VX over the MX due that I have small hands.

The VX was a breath of fresh air after using older bulkier versions and wired versions of Logitech mouses. I spend long hours behind the computer, mostly surfing/reading, editing photos and coding websites. I comfortable mouse is important for me.

Then last month suddenly the left button started acting up, when I wanted to change a file name I normally click once on it to edit the name, but every time I clicked the file it registered a double click and opened the file instead of just making the file name editable. I thought at first it as the Logitech software, LCC, that handles Logitech hardware on Apple. So I uninstalled it and tried USB Overdrive, but the problem persisted. In short my VX had a defect left click exactly like mentioned on the Logitech forum.

Logitech Marathon Mouse M705

After some quick research I decided that the Logitech Marathon Mouse M705 would be my next mouse.

Mostly because it has about the same build as the Revolution VX and long lasting batteries. The Marathon was just released in Europe last month so luckily one or two store already had in stock. The current mouse stock at the moment of my purchase really left no other choice then the Marathon as there wasn’t anything new nor did they sell Revolution VX anymore.

The Marathon feels more sturdier in the hand then the VX, compared to it the VX rattles a lot more then the Marathon. The buttons are dark plastic which is more nicer then the chrome look on the VX. Also the Marathon body has a more matte finished plastic that feels nice in the hand.

The only con of the Marathon is the normal click-to-click scrolling to hyper-fast scrolling button. It is situated just above the scroll wheel, so it feels like a bump under the finger when scrolling. They could have made it that button sticks out a little less.

And last the Marathon uses the Unifying receiver, it can be paired with up to six compatible Logitech mice and keyboards. Plus it so small sized it can nicely fit with the latest Apple keyboards. I don’t use LLC anymore but now I use SteerMouse. It works flawlessly, only the 4th and 5th button, the back and forward button thus must be programmed to work as such in web browsers, in my case Firefox; CMD Right Arrow and CMD Left Arrow. Make sure you don’t have LLC or other mouse management app installed at the same time, they interfere with each other.

Long term expectation

After using the mouse daily now for almost a month I expect it will start having same hardware issues as I had with the VX. The right button doesn’t feel sturdy and already is very sensible on click, so it will were out fast and overtime start doing the same thing as the VX.

Logitech gives a three year factory warranty if I’m not mistaken. I lost the purchase receipt of the VX but I’m planning on calling their customer support soon to see if they will replace it considering it’s a known issue with their products. I hope they do because the VX is not a cheap mouse and I had expected it to last longer than two years.

To be safe I already put the Marathon receipt together with all my other hardware receipts and I’m even saving the box to be sure. Because I’m not planning on shelling out 60 euros again next year on a mouse.

But all in all I’m happy with the Marathon it works well, thanks to the fact it uses two AA batteries it feels just heavy enough. And it has the same ergonomic build as the VX to minimize pain in the hand after long hours behind the computer.

I said I would wait a week after purchasing Fever to write a review but I use it regularly everyday so I already have some data. When Fever came out the main complain by the crowd was that it is self hosted. I have no idea but I’m guessing Shaun Inman’s target group are the more tech savy people who probably already have a host and website but on the other hand the install is so simple that anyone can do it. It even auto updates when there is a new release!

Before purchasing I was wondering if I would just put it on this domain, but I only have 400mb space of which 350 is already in use. Considering Fever is new there is no feedback on how much space it will take and how much data traffic. To be safe I put it on another host and domain where I don’t have anything much. Since June 19 I have Fever running, today is the 24th, so 5 days of running Fever without cron, but keeping it connected with the server through Fluid.

On June 18 I cleared the data on the host and on June 19 I installed Fever so the data shown here is all Fever usage. I started with 43 feeds I now have 54 feeds.

This can be way wrong mode. Correct me in the comments if so, I’m no math person Lets do some math, nothing precisely but an average: 1MB – 1024KB, From June 19 till June 23 Fever used an average of 33MB. In those 5 days I went from 43 feeds to 54 feeds so we will use an average of 50 feeds.

The math: 33MB divided by 50 feeds is 675.84KB per feed in 5 days. Also most of these 50 feeds did not update in these days so no data came in.

So if you have like 200 feeds, that would be like 132MB for 200 feeds over 5 days, but obviously this only ads if the feed is updated. End this can be wrong mode

Assuming this math is correct Fever can be a real data traffic consumer if you have more then 100 feeds which most of them being active, thus updating weekly. I’m curious about others their stats for Fever to compare.

I just had the cron set a moment ago but before cron using the iPhone version is a bit useless as it isn’t possible to refresh from the iPhone.

Refreshing feeds requires maintaining a connection to your server. This persistent connection would be a significant drain on your device’s battery.

What I currently do is in the morning when I turn on the computer I open Fever just to let it update before leaving for work and before leaving work I open Fever in the browser to let it refresh. So this way I can read the new feeds on my iPhone when on the go. So for iPhone using a cron job is a must.

The Mobile version supposedly also works on the Pre and Android browsers per update 1.01 so I’m guessing it works on the Blackberry too.

If you like me like using something usable and beautiful then Fever is the way to go for a feed reader. Shaun Inman works full time on it so features are added without long waits, bugs gets fixed on timely basis. For example the bookmarklet; “Feedlet” to add the feed of the website you are currently viewing, had the option set to add the feed to the “Sparks” group. With the recent update 1.02 this is changed, so if you just subscribe the feed will go in Kindling with all other feeds unless you specify a group, then it will also be added to that group.

But the best of all, the main feature is the Hot factor of recent entries. If you have a lot a feeds you can filter out what is being talked about the most and by which blogs. Now with Fever I subscribe faster to feeds where before I was really picky because I don’t like scanning through hundreds of feeds to see what’s being talked about.

Finally did I mention the auto update?! It’s pretty awesome, I hope the next point zero release of Mint will have this feature too. With WordPress now also sporting an “Automatically update” button, apps that require you to unzip, read instruction and upload by FTP are now so old fashioned in comparison. I should start polishing my PHP skills and learn how to code these functionality.

Is Fever worth 30 dollars? Yes. You get a high end interface, smooth AJAX functionality, you don’t have to worry about running updates and a developer who dedicates a lot of time to improving the application.

Related: Storage Nine web hosting.