I'm contemplating getting a wireless mouse but I've heard that they can be laggy and thus aren't best for gaming. Anyone know if there's any truth in that rumour?

I've never heard or experienced that. Though I'd imagine rf to be superior to ir, otherwise they seem to be identical in responsivness. just don't skimp and you should be fine.

I was looking at the nice logitech desktop combos with a recharging station built-in to the radio hub.

This is the one...

The diNovo stuff looks interesting but it costs way too much...

I think that's the model I just ordered, though I'm not getting the keyboard (rf has a nasty tendency to go way beyond the 6 feet they specify. And there is no encryption between the kb and receiver station.

Hmm. I see what you mean, What about the bluetooth stuff? I know bluetooth implements limited encryption but I doubt I'd be able to spend an extra £30 for it.

Trackballs are the best. They take some adjusting to, but you have a much wider range of movement in a smaller space.

Agreed on trackballs...

It's all a matter of how much privacy do you want. If you live in an older building that has the tendency to interfere with radio transmissions, you may be in luck and have the equivalent of a faraday (sp) cage around your computer, if not, then you may still be okay if you are some distance from your neighbors.
It's a matter of whether or not you care if someone can get your passwords easily; let's face it, if the average government wanted access to your computer, they'd have it. It's the criminals you have to worry about. You'd be surprised how many people drive around with antenae looking for these errent, unguarded signals and Wireless access points. Which reminds me, at most office supply stores lately, I have seen a device that detects WAP's broadcasting in the area, man they just keep making things easier for the hackers...

That device is called a "wireless network card"

I am continually shocked by the number of wireless access points that are not password-protected - there's three within range of my apartment, and that's what I can pick up without any fancy antenna or anything on my laptop.

No, the device I am refering to is a small keyfob that you pusha little button to test the area, if green there's a WAP if not, there isn't

Some wireless and optical mice tend to be a bit laggy or jumpy if you move the mouse really fast, like when you play your 3d shooter and have to turn quickly to return fire or similar.

But there are a few that stand out and does a really good job (not having these problem) namely Logitechs MX500 and MX510.

An interesting bit from Here:

Nice to see that logitech does live up to it's illustrious reputation. I didn't expect to see encrypted wireless peripherals for another 2 years.

Well I just ordered the Logitech Cordless Desktop MX... I've been meaning to replace my keyboard/mouse for a while now, i just hope the new mouse isn't too laggy for gaming. The reviews are good though, they say it's as good as any corded mouse...

Best of luck.

It's here. So-far it's quite nice. The keyboard has slightly less click than I prefer but the features are nice. I'm gonna try it gaming now to see if the mouse can hold its own...

Looking forward to hearing the results.

All is good so-far. There's no discernable lag. My frag count was down a bit, and at times I think my weapons fired a milisecond slower than they usually do, but I blame my unfamiliarity with the mouse. The functions are good although the "Quick switch program selector" on the mouse dosen't seem to do anything... Not that I'll ever have a use for it.

[edit]
The encryption isn't enabled by default... You have to enable it yourself by running a utility hidden-away in the keyboard options. They keyboard is also wider than my last one and I've had to remove my (now redundant) mouse-pad to fit it on th desk.

The radio does function beyond the specified 2m but I can't get it to function properly from the next room over so it seems that my walls are blocking it somewhat. That's good as now I can stick the keyboard beside my bed and use the built-in media controls as a remote for winamp.

The transmitter asks to be placed 8 inches away from any electrical devices, which I am just managing on my fairly small computer desk. The one iritating thing so-far is that it opens-up the links from the quick buttons all in the same window...
[/edit]

Interesting. I have the mouse model ms700 I'm diggin the extra stuff, like back and forward, and the cruise control. For the quickswitch you have to have multiple things open. it acts kinda like alt-f4.

Oh well, I might consider taht keyboard soon though.
You might want to write up a review of the gear for the forum later, let other people hear about the stuff.

When does the keyboard kick in? When you turn on the power of when windows starts? A problem with the old wireless models was that you couldn't access BIOS and other such things since the keyboard didn't start until windows did. So you had to have a normal keyboard to if you wanted to access it.

I got the quicklaunch working, I accidentally only installed the keyboard software.

As for a review: Well: My review is effectively what I wrote above. I'll just sum it up here:
Good:
Lots of useful extra keys which you can alter the functions of.
Good ergonomic design, the mouse is not "too small for large hands" as I saw in one review.
Good range on them allows them to be used from around 4m away on a full battery.
Encryption on the keyboard removes the possible problems with that for personal use.
Keyboard has a pleasant click now that I'm used to it.
The mouseand keyboard look and feel great

Bad:
It needs more space due to the larger keyboard and distane restriction on the reciever ( the space restriction probably isn't nessecary though).
Not all of the buttons on the mouse are useable in games (Am basing that statement on Quake 3 though which is quite old now)
The base station looks a bit silly IMHO.

[edit]@lorg: I assume it's available in the bios, a previous model was available before when I made a computer for someone else with a wireless keyboard, but I'll need to check that[/edit]

And I totally agree, the base station for the mouse looks stupid

I missed this discussion...

The original question had been about rumors of wireless mice being affected by lag. I've heard gamers complain about this in the past. The technical side of the debate had something to do with the the signal on the wireless mouse moving slower than what it would via a USB connection, or something like that. I've used a wireless mouse for gaming and, while I wouldn't consider it the best gaming mouse ever made, I never noticed any depreciation in my gameplay. YMMV

It mostly has to do with the sample rate of wireless mice. They don't tend to have that much lag, but they do have a low sample rate, making very fine mouse movements difficult of impossible. This is why a lot of FPS players were using ps2rate, so that the 'minimum' mouse movement would be very small on the screen. For regular games it's not so bad, but if you need very find mouse control for something, the wireless mice aren't the best.

It's been going fine gaming-wise, the only problem I've been having is that the batteries seem to go down very quickly.

It says that for full capacity 3 complete charges are needed, but if leave it in the charger then the lights just go off, if I take it back out of the charger then put it back in again it just shows the green fully charged LED then goes off... Should I just leave it in the charger overnight sometime and ignore wetyher the lights are flashing or not?

I am not sure exactly, I've done google searches on this topic but my google-fu is weak.

A number, presumably the encryption key or similar, was a 16-digit combination of numbers and letters which was typed into the keyboard whilst I was setting the encryption up. The encryption key was probably made public as I typed it into the keyboard, as encryption had not been set-up yet, but then-again many encryption schemes can do that.