Makers of glass tables or highly polished desks don’t worry about the traction of computer mice with laser beams, but computer users know the problem. Now new mouse-tracking technology from Logitech promises to make the mouse-on-glass issue a thing of the past.
The Logitech Darkfield Laser Tracking technology, announced Tuesday, allows the company’s mouse products to be used “virtually anywhere you want,” including on clear glass — at least four millimeters thick — or on any high-gloss surface.
Performance or Anywhere Mouse
The new technology is available in either the Logitech Performance Mouse, a full-sized unit, or the compact Anywhere Mouse, for use with notebooks.
The Fremont, Calif.-based company said its research shows that 40 percent of people have a glass surface at home, but glass is only part of a slippery problem. Other highly polished surfaces, such as granite or lacquered wood, can also make a computer mouse lose its bearings.
Rory Dooley, senior vice president at Logitech’s Control Devices unit, said “until now, no mouse has been able to match” the flexibility that laptops afford — the ability to compute anywhere, anytime.
Ordinary laser tracking needs to detect textural details on a surface, Logitech said. The more the irregularities, the easier to identify reference points so the laser can accurately measure motion. But high-gloss surfaces don’t offer many irregularities.
Enter the Darkfield technology. It uses dark-field microscopy that can detect and track microscopic particles and micro-scratches on top of a surface, rather than the surface itself. In other words, dust and scratches now have some value. They are used by a Darkfield mouse to track exactly where it has moved.
Logitech said both mice models with the new technology feature its hyper-fast scrolling, as well as click-to-click mode for more precision in going through lists, slideshows or photos.
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