Tag: boxing day

REVIEW: Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution

Usually I’m not in the city on boxing day, so I don’t have much experience with finding post-Xmas deals. I did venture out this year however, and managed to snag a fairly good deal on a new mouse and keyboard at Best Buy. Listed at $199.99 CDN, I picked up the Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution for just $99.

Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution

I had been using a plain old Dell USB mouse and keyboard since my last cordless Logitech mouse died about a year ago. It used two rechargeable AA batteries, but would consistently kill them with just a couple hours of use. The Dell mouse worked fine, but it’s most advanced feature was a scroll wheel. The Dell keyboard also worked well, and had some handy media controls on top, including a volume dial. Other than that however, I found it incredibly loud and the keys sometimes stuck. I knew it was time for a new mouse and keyboard, but it wasn’t a high enough priority for me to go searching.

I’m really glad I found the deal and picked up my new mouse and keyboard. The MX Revolution mouse has both a tilt scroll wheel and a thumb wheel (for more precise scrolling), back and forward buttons, and a search button. Best of all, it comes with built-in batteries and a charging stand so that I never have to change batteries. The keyboard includes the standard layout, plus media controls on the left and an integrated LCD screen on the top that can display the date and time, temperature, media information, and more. Both devices use Bluetooth.

The mouse feels very comfortable, and the soft built-in palm rest on the keyboard is a nice touch. The keys are incredibly quiet compared to my old keyboard, and feel very smooth. So far the battery life on the mouse has been great (haven’t had to charge it yet). The scroll wheel took a bit of getting used to (it turns into a hyper scroll wheel when you have a long document) but now I really like it!

I’ll admit that the LCD screen isn’t incredibly useful, but it is pretty darn cool. Based on the first week of use, I think I’m definitely going to like this mouse and keyboard.

Boxing Day Shopping

I don’t think I’ve ever really gone shopping on Boxing Day as I am usually not in the city. Everyone told me that it is madness, that there are just too many people. I decided to go anyway, but I waited until late this afternoon. I went to Best Buy and picked up three games and a CD (first time I have bought one in ages…). The line was crazy long, and there wasn’t a lot of room to move throughout the rest of the store. It really was madness.

It seems to me that Boxing Day sales were much more heavily advertised this year than last. Will that translate into higher sales? Apparently last year broke records here in Canada:

Boxing Day 2005 was the single largest economic transaction day ever in the history of Canadian commerce (according to Visa). Individual big box stores can even gross over $1,000,000(CAN) on one single boxing day.

A lot of people don’t like Boxing Day because it is too commercial. I could care less. If I can get a good deal, might as well go! I feel bad for the people that have to clean up the stores though – Best Buy was a disaster this afternoon.