I had purchased a Logitech MX Revolution mouse when I purchased my Mac Pro. The MX is very comfortable and offers state-of-the-art functionality. I’d run into a bit of a problem with drivers, but that had been resolved by using Steermouse.

However, I’d unfortunately had an ongoing problem with the MX that’d I’d been unable to rectify; the wireless radio was susceptible to interference from Wifi, being located in the same 2.4GHz frequency range as 802.11b/g/n.

The interference caused the mouse to either fail to respond, or to jerk around erratically when large-scale data transfers were occurring on my wireless network. Moving to 5GHz 802.11n eliminated the problem, but then my g-only iPhone didn’t have network access. Bah.

Being just as pleased as it’s possible to be with the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, I decided to check out the companion mouse, the Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000.

The first thing to note about this mouse is that it’s not really designed for the laptop user. Firstly, it’s not Bluetooth, secondly, it uses quite a large radio transceiver, complete with a long USB cable. Perfect for my needs with the Mac Pro, but not something you’d want to haul around with a laptop.

Power is provided by a pair of AA batteries. The mouse has a low-battery indicator which turns green briefly when batteries are inserted to indicate that they’re good; it otherwise isn’t lit unless the batteries run low. The batteries seem to last for quite a long time.

The mouse has a pleasantly grippy, rubbery surface, much like an eraser; it feels quite good to me. The laser is very accurate, and movement is precise.

The ergonomic bit is immediately obvious in the height and angle of the mouse. Relative to other mice, it’s very tall, and quite sharply angled. As a result, the wrist is held in a neutral position when using the mouse. This is a bit odd at first; it feels very much like gripping a baseball. However, after a very short period of time one does begin to notice the comfort, to the point that using a regular mouse feels quite uncomfortable in comparison.

Let’s put it this way: after using this mouse for a few hours at home, I went back to the store and obtained a second one for use at work. It’s that comfortable.

Best of all, no Wifi interference.

Potential downsides:

• It’s a relatively large mouse. Individuals with large hands are going to like this mouse; those with small hands may find the forward and back buttons difficult to reach.
• As with many mice, it’s right-handed only.

While the mouse ships with an excellent driver, Steermouse also works perfectly with it. As I’m a huge Steermouse fan, I deinstalled the Microsoft driver, which thankfully ships with an uninstaller.

Truly, a great mouse, highly recommended.

Note the barrel distortion in the following image — there seems to be some strange gravitational effect, perhaps located behind those trees; it looks as if the water is draining toward the center of the image.

This type of distortion tends to occur with telephoto lenses, even good ones, at the widest end of their telephoto range.

In this case, the lens is a Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G DX VR; quite a nice lens within most of its range. This particular shot was taken at 18mm, which isn’t where the lens does its best work. The funhouse mirror effect is quite unpleasant, and without correction, this shot would be garbage.

This type of distortion can be manually corrected in Photoshop, but that’s tedious, and the results are inconsistent, which is annoying, since a given lens will have predictable distortion, so the distortion should be correctable in a systematic and calibrated manner, just as in this corrected image:

This image was corrected by PTLens, which at USD $15 must be the best value in image processing available. Your $15 obtains all of the following:

• Automatic, calibrated correction of pincushion and barrel distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and perspective, with hundreds of lenses supported.
• A standalone Windows application.
• A standalone Mac application.
• A Photoshop plug-in for both Mac and Windows.
• An external editor for Lightroom on both Mac and Windows.
• A plug-in for Aperture 2.1 or later on the Mac.

Note that the Mac support is Intel-only; PowerPC isn’t supported.

Since I’m an Aperture user, the Aperture plug-in is my weapon of choice. The utility is fast, intuitive, and the results are excellent.

A trial download providing 10 corrections prior to requiring a purchase is available.

I don’t think there’s any better value out there in image processing; this thing is a steal at $15.

Tags: Photography