Got a Logitech G500 mouse recently and I thought I'd just quickly note my impressions of the mouse and its associated software. First, some background on my previous (non-throwaway) mice to give an idea of what I've used before:

1. Logitech MX1000: a wireless mouse that had little to no lag in my particular environment, in contrast to:
2. Logitech MX Revolution: the wireless mouse Logitech sent me as a replacement for the MX1000 above; had two wheels, one of which had a free spinning mode; unfortunately had terrible interference problems for me and was essentially unusable
3. Razer DeathAdder: a wired mouse with a great shape, just wish it had more buttons
4. Purchased the Logitech G500 because my Razer mouse was double-clicking sporadically and developed a flaky scroll wheel (scrolling down would sometimes scroll up)

I don't have much to say about the mouse itself that hasn't already been said on the internet -- it feels good in the hand and has plenty of buttons. I'm going to focus on the part I found more interesting, the on-board memory.

Now, one problem with most of these mice is that while the left, right, middle, and two side buttons (Mouse4 and Mouse5) are supported natively by Windows, any additional buttons on them require the appropriate drivers to be installed. This isn't necessarily bad in itself, but I always liked the idea of a mouse that just works, fully functional, without requiring any drivers. The DeathAdder added on-board memory to avoid this issue, so you could do things like save a macro to Mouse5 and bring it to another computer and have that macro available. Unfortunately, it only had five buttons, all of which already have standard functions, so I never found a good use for this feature. However, the on-board memory did let you save your mouse DPI settings, which was somewhat useful.

The G500 also has on-board memory, but this time it also has the spare buttons to make it worthwhile. In addition to the five standard buttons, the G500 has one extra side button, two DPI buttons, a left wheel tilt and a right wheel tilt. All of these are programmable and, as long as you stick to commands that can be sent by a keyboard or a mouse (including standard media keys like volume and playback controls), will work on any computer without drivers. It apparently does this by acting as several human interface devices, including a keyboard and a mouse:

It's pretty interesting assigning a keystroke like 'A' to a side button or having your DPI buttons control the system's volume. After setting my bindings up I uninstalled the SetPoint software and still have a fully working mouse. Neat.