Has your son ever tried these mice? They are terrific, espeically the side buttons, flipping back through websites is nothing for me. My scroll bar is so fast even at 800 DPI...its unubelievable...and when I forget to put it in the charger...do I ever hate using the corded mouse until it recharges...everthing is just so easy even for mundane everyday web-browsing. As far as the dents in the MX518...that's where your fingers go and it allows a plyable left and right clicking, its like a mylar type of thing...he doesn't want any dents or lights? Low battery indicator is out? I wish that other MX1000 owner was still here...I've never make a mistake with the side buttons. In the beginning, I hit them a few times by mistake...its called learning, but not once in the last year and a half. Every time my cousin comes over here to play a game, and I tell him to left click ...he always clicks the wheel...he keeps looking for lines to tell him where right and left are. Then he gets used to the idea there are no visible left or right clicking lines, its the entire left or entire right side of the mouse whereever your fingers are comfortable. As far as the lights...they are LED lights and barely noticeable. That one poster said on the MX610 you can turn off the mail indicator ... they are like pinpricks of light...I forget to look at my battery indicators They are not that visible.. The Diamondback Plasma they are more visible...its an art thing and because they are LED they don't use much, if any, extra electricity. Why is your son insisting on archaic mice? Have you watched the little movie presentation? On the link below click on "Product Tour". You can turn features on or off with the software. The hardest thing to get used to is the size. They are larger, they require a bigger mouse pad, and lasers do better on flat light colored surfaces...but lasers will track fairly accurately on any surface. Are they ever sensitive to the slightest movement...but you get used to it...real quick. Instead of wide swings its a flick of your wrist. And believe it or not you even get used to holding the mouse without ever touching the buttons. The only drawback is the 2.4Ghz frequency and wireless routing...the one poster said even with that there was no interference with the mouse's performance...If you don't have a wireless router ...it might be a blast to learn with. New Technology. marf Here is a link that might be useful: MX610 Product Page

Unfortunately my sudden refusal to shutdown, seems to be quite regular. I click "Turn Off From the Start Menu" We get to the windows is now (closing)shutting down screen, the jingle plays...and we are not on nor off. Its Microsoft limbo hell. Mouse control has shut down. Can I delete .Net Framework 2.2 without hell to pay? My gut feeling is my problems are stemming from .net or the Merc board. The Merc board once shut down my Morrowind game and cancelled the tilde key assignment. Even Bethesda Softworks said there was nothing I could do. Ideazon support told me to upgrade my all keyboard drivers to hid, and that (unknowingly) knocked out the PS2 keyboard drivers used by the laser mouse assignments...it wasn't until I redownloaded the laser mouse drivers, did everything start to work. I can now cheat on my game to my hearts' content. (The tilde key brings up a game console where dirty little cheaters, like me, can enter codes to cheat.) This driver install and uninstall freeze with this crappy keyboard, that I'm stuck with to save money, is going to break me. It might have caused some problems. I had to reboot my computer from the default settings in bios. Although there was a warning on the Microsoft update site about one of .net updates rendering some computers unresponsive? Well! gee. I CANNOT DO A SYSTEM RESTORE! I tried a few different restore points...and honest to Pete!...I got this message saying the system hadn't changed so they weren't going to bother, there wasn't any point!? I mean, I never!!! What the????

I use a Logitech MX1000 laser mouse and I am very happy with it. The G7 linked below is the next generation but looks very similar. Mine has 8 buttons (I do not use them all) and the beauty is you can do so much more with the choices. Go back or forward a page is thumb controlled. The wheel can be rolled, pressed down for down scrolls or pressed sideways to move left or right of wide pages. It is a large mouse making life a little easier on arthritic hands. The only negative issue is more me than the mouse, I fail to place it in the charging stand and have on rare occasions had to walk away while it charges. Minor irritation easily corrected with a smarter operator. I have a Logitech roller ball controlled with the thumb. Again, great for arthritics but I found I never had close enough control when photo editing. Other than that I did like that mouse, still have it in fact. Here is a link that might be useful: Logitech G7 laser mouse

Wow Julie! What a transformation! Everything in the space works very well. Regarding your earlier questions, one thing to help you understand the pricing debacle, your fabricator was doing what just about any fabricator does. You see, the cost of the stone is usually less than half of the overall quote. The labor involved in fabricating is also minimal. The bulk of the cost to a fabricator in doing business is the purchase and operating costs of machinery and tooling. A single set of diamond tools for a simple profile can exceed $5k and could only last for a few months. Then there are the diamond polishing pads not to mention how quickly grinders and polishers burn out when working granite. When a fabricator is busy, they charge a reasonable price which included profit. When they are slow or just want to move material, they can justify much lower quotes if its the right time, stone, client etc. Also, fabricators get their stones from distributors or direct import. A single slab of mascarello from a distributor could cost $2k but if the fabricator chose to import a bundle (8-24 slabs) they could get the same slab for less then $1k. When the fabricator quotes the job, they are going to quote at the standard market price which considers distributor costs, even if they imported it. Now, if the client does not seem willing to pay the cost, and if the slab were imported, and if the fabricator needs space, and if things are slow, it's very understandable why they would come down so much. One more thing, I've never seen a slab of Mascarello like that. Slabs can vary greatly, especially Mascarello, however, it looks nothing like mascarello to me. Beautiful none the less! But I'd be willing to bet it isn't. Mascarello is almost always very richly colored by high iron ore depositing with large feldspar flecks and often feldspar spikes among large areas of quartz and swaths of quartzite.