Now M$ and Billy boy wants to buy one of the best keyboard and mice manufactures in the world. Great now we will have true innovation go down the tubes and instead we will have the Windows 7 certified keyboard. Guaranteed not to work with any other version of Windoze and guess what IT PROBABLY WONZT WORK WITH THIS ONE UNLESS YOU BUY THE M$ BRANDED COPY SUCKERS!!!....god I hate this news I hope this is wrong.

and merge with HP.

Then they could be like Apple and stop tarting Windows out to all and sundry. Also, they could build all that legacy IPR from VMS, HPUX and Tandem into Windows Server, making it even bigger and badder.

You just had to try and set the benchmark for the worst news of 2008 didn't you? Couldn't you just have ignored this one so we never knew about it until was too late and thus ease the pain a little? No you had to torment us with advanced notice :/

Easily the worst news of 2008 so far. Lets take a great hardware company with a forward thinking attitude, excellent products at consumer friendly prices and DESTROY it.

Glad my new logitech wireless laser desktop arrived 2 days ago before MS got the filthy hands inside it.

Genuinly upset, RIP consumer choice.

This would be very unfortunate. There are several good mice out there, all of them manufactered by Logitech. I've only once bought a non-Logitech mouse and regretted it immediatly. I recommend Logitech to all my customers and have seen many problems with other mice, mostly with the driver and the use of the middle button.

Asian mice don't count for much and the M$ mice, well Bill figured nobody would ever be using the middle mouse button as ... a middle mouse button.

Without a doubt M$ would mess this up again.

If you really hate somebody, give him a Genius mouse. It's really the dork of mouses.

Don't have much respect for that thing MS is calling an OS these days but used to have a lot of respect for their hardware, their mice used to go in the same 'expensive but worth it' class as IBM keyboards.

Their standards have been going down hill for a long time though and they are pretty much in the 'overpriced plasticy stuff' class now.

Although Logitech where never really classed as industrial quality their prices where always good, but if MS gets their hands on them its to reduce the competition for their own products rather than any technological benefit.

Its a shame both that MS hardware sunk to this level and that they are now trying to dominate it. Bit stupid too as they really don't stand a chance against the eastern competition.

cheers

Logitech peripherals are brilliant and well priced. Microsoft peripherals, in my experience, are the opposite. Don't like this at all.

I wonder how long it would be before they tried to make a DRM-protected version of the LCD software on the G15...

For starters, Microsoft has a rather bad reputation of ruining the products of any company they take over (history is littered with numerous examples of this, including Hotmail and Mapblast).

A Microsoft purchase of Logitech would be enough to drive me away from the Logitech name.

Oliver.

If you go looking for, say, a force feedback gaming peripheral, your options are basically Microsoft and Logitech. Now I'm depressed. Thanks.

My TrackMan Marble is 8 years old. I will purchase another before Logitech disappears into the blackhole known as microsoft.

Logitech the purveyor of quality peripherals. Features that stand out strongly include....

1] Excellent concepts and sound design & engineering

2] Excellent build quality

3] Reasonable price

Let Microscum into the mix and what do you get

1] Me too concepts.

2] Cheapest nastiest build quality engineered down to the lowest possible cost

3] high prices

4] THAT BLOODY DISGUSTING LOGO STARING YOU IN THE FACE DAY IN DAY OUT ( at least for the first week and a half till the piece of crap hardware fails )

Logitech get this message very clearly, let Microscum in the door and it WILL spell the end of your reputation, your product, and your company.

Logitech is the only large vendor of good mice. VX Revolution & MX Revolution are top of the breed. Much better ergonomics than MS. I never much cared for MS' mice. If MS buys Logitech it'll certainly kill the mice.

Razer is nice too though.

is now targeting the world's best keyboard and mouse maker. It had to happen, I suppose, since nothing good ever lasts in this world. I've had my Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse now for nearly two years; it's only now starting to wear out - and I've REALLY caned it (to the tune of 8-16 hours per day EVERY day!). That's by far the longest any input peripheral has ever lasted me, and I will be going out and buying a few more for spares before Logitech goes the way of its unfortunate predecessors.

Please, please let this be just a rumour. If not... RIP Logitech. You will be sorely missed.

I LOVE IT!!

Here you have MS, buying companies that ACTUALLY make their own products.

There you have Apple, who hasn't made ANYTHING with their name on it since the Apple II+ and IIe was farmed out to Canada and then Japan. Ya know Apple has NEVER made ANY of their own portables ... Sony/IBM Japan DESIGNED and MADE every last one until 1999! (now it's Taiwan and Red Sweatshop China) Geez, that makes Apple no better than an eMachines.

I don't know why people are slagging off MS hardware so badly. I have had a few different MS mice over the years and have been very pleased with them. The bluetooth gaming mouse I bought 4 years ago is still going strong. I also have an MS joystick (Sidewinder Pro) which must be 9 or 10 years old now and is still working fine, it's been one of the best joysticks I ever bought.

Ok, I don't like all of their stuff, some of their keyboards are pretty crap but they aren't as bad as some people are making out.

... when MS and Logitech hardware products were made in the same factories.

Possibly even still are.

Oh, and re *really* bad mice, look no further than A4tech.

I own two Squeezebox devices. Excellent hardware, well designed and built. The software is open source and free so anyone (not just device owners) can use it to stream their music collection. It's available on Mac, Linux, Windows and compatible with iTunes and other appropriate services and a huge range of music file formats. Where would this go do you think ? This is indeed the worst news I've heard for a long time.

I thought Billy boy already left M$. I would say it's Ballmer we're supposed to flame.

This is really, really *bad* news.

Logitech's mice are the best by miles and I've had my eye on a squeezebox for a little while now... I can just see the squeezebox being turned into a DRM'd pile of shite.

I can't see how this can be allowed as the peripherals market will then have virtually no competition left. FFS, why can't MS keep it's dirty little mits to itself!

They make really good speakers. I've got 2 sets of 5.1 speakers from them and they are brilliant.

I've also got a mouse and keyboard by them also very good.

Microsoft has been ripping of the logitec stuff for years now.

Are Microsoft allowed to buy Logitec? They are really the only competition in this market to Microsoft

Must agree with your comment re Genius mice. I have proved it to myself and others on many occasions.

What will I do if Logitech goes? Sad, Sad Day!

Like almost everyone else on this thread I feel it's a shame that MS could do this. I bought a mx laser mouse and keyboard to go with it about a year ago and I think I'm going to go buy a spare of both before something nasty happens. It's the most comfortable keyboard and mouse I've ever owned. I also need to go find out if logitech do a bluetooth ps3 keyboard before MS come in and destroy it if it exists.

O god, couldn't this have got announced closer to pay day?

I bought a Intellimouse wireless explorer mouse 6 years ago and it still works (no internal moving parts you see)

Also the MS Sidewinder force feedback 2 joystick was so well built it aquired legendary status amongst Flightsim players to such an extent i was able to sell my working 5 year old model for almost as much as a paid for it. The prices on ebay actually went up when they stopped making them new.

Logitech joysticks on the other hand are pretty terrible flimsy items, only good for occasional use.

I love my Microsoft mice, and would never swap them for Logitech ones. So I don't want them taking any styling advice there.

As for the worrying Apple fans, I can use my MS mouse on a Mac, so I can't think why they'd stop that all of a sudden for Logitech ones.

The only area I _would_ be concerned letting MS ruining Logitech over, though, is their excellent range of Playstation wheels.

This is crap news!

My Current Logitech mice are in their 6th year. Unfortunately the paint they used was rather cheap and I now have white unbranded mice instead of the sliver with logitech logo. But never the less they are superb for gaming and image editing!

Im going to definitely buy some new Logitech mice now so that I get at least another 10 years use with non M$ mice!

Microsofts message to their software programmers is 'developers, developers developers.....' etc.. Clearly they need a similar message to their hardware makers. 'Inventors, inventors, inventors....'

Well reading this article pretty much ruined my day. As Rich said, time to start bulk buying.

If they do manage to buy logitech, it will be the biggest kick in the nads for the consumer since the game/gamestation takeover was approved.

Balls.

I've not been able to get definite evidence of it, besides sales/tech people at various disties stories, as well as some very strange behaviour while testing Logitech/MS hardware, but I believe some of MS' hardware uses Logitech innards -- notably Web cams.

Things like MS device drivers barfing when installed on machines with Logitech drivers installed -- and MS KB saying a fix when MS device drivers don't work is to remove certain keys referring to Logitech devices.

MS hardware can be good (keyboards, mice) but mostly it's some good quality hardware designed into stupid packagning with idiotic focus-group defined features, with kludgy drivers (sometimes not even signed according to MS own driver signing standards!) and software that keeps trying to force you to use Microsoft services ("NO! F#CK OFF! I DON'T WANT TO USE F#CKING WINDOWS LIVE! I TOLD YOU THREE TIMES ALREADY!)

I love my Microsoft mouse!

Keyboards? I only buy the Model-M style clicky ones...when you're used to one of those everything else feels a bit soggy.

OK so we are all pretty much devastated by the news so here is my plan. Many people have mentioned buying new kit from Logitech before MS get in and ruin the game, so my idea is basically an extension of this.

Everyone who loves Logitech stuff go out and buy more. If all Logitech fans do this, it will force the share price up (due to a massive increase in sales), make the company more expensive for Microsoft to buy (or maybe even make Logitech realise they shouldn't sell). Then of course once MS buy Logitech for an inflated price, we all have our peripherals which we know will sit happily in their box for however many years we need them too and still work perfectly when we finally do need them. This of course means few people will be buying Logisoft kit because we already have our spares and we could be looking at a failure as monstrous as Vista for Microsoft.

Logitech is the only brand I would buy myself for mouse/keyboard/steering wheel/etc.

If you haven't used the real stuff, you would not know how crap your M$ so called hardware is. I was thinking to buy an extra G5 laser mouse for backup reason. Hell, I should now buy two, just in case. And I was thinking to wait for the new steering wheel to drop price. Looks like I have to buy now, quickly before the last good stuffs are gone.

Anyone claiming the MS hardware is cheap junk must have a couple of DiNovo Kepoards shoved up their arse as MS have been pretty consistent over the years in this area. Fine if you have your issues with MS over this or that, but claiming they can't make a decent mouse is just dim fanboy behaviour.

However I'm not happy at the roumour as can't be good for competition and I wouldn't be surprised at a EU/US Anti-trust investigation unless they were spinning off some of Logitech.

You must be either M$ funboy or haven't used the real good stuff.

Once M$ did made a decent mouse and gained respective position in market, then their standard began to drop, and they stopped on improvement. Nowadays, their mice are full of sh!t. Just try a Logitech G5 mouse, you will never touch any other crap ever again.

And the keyboard war was long over, M$ hasn't had one decent keyboard for a long long time.

"What do you want to throw today?"

I gave up on logitech ages ago... For a mouse one of the Trust or Typhoon brands did wonders for me over the years. Atm I have a Trust laser mouse bought it for 20 eur and it works great. Big bulky and fits nicely into my large hands.

For a keyboard... Well ibm set the norm with it's model M and so far none have beat it...

MS vs Logitech.....well it makes a change from PC vs Apple!

Now where's that beer......

Did anyone else pick up on the Logitech "commitment to open source?"

M$: "Not if we own you!"

I must say of the two keyboards I bought in the last year the MS keyboard is much nicer to use that the logitech.

The feel of the keyboard is much more satisfying to use.

The logitech also has the stupid arrangement of the insert/delete/home/end/pg up/pg dn keys in a vertical stack instead of the normal horizontal arrangement. But I see some of the MS keyboards now have this arrangement too :(

However I still think Logitech mouses are much better ...

<pedant> The plural of (computer) mouse is, I believe, mouses.

Or meese, according to many people. Not to be confused with meese (the plural of moose).

</pedant>

I've always used the Curvey keyboards as I get strain issues. I had the wireless desktop from both companies, Logitecs ate batteries so fast I wanted them to be on a rotating caroucel.

The logitec keyboard used to be better, but MS's later one does seem to have over taken them by a margin.

MS's had problems if the sensor was more than about 5 cm away. Much prefered the weighting of the MS mouse, although Logitec seemed to be more accurate.

As yet neither of them do a light up keyboard in the dark version that i've seen like the Mac's. Any ho a merger seems like bad news.

Never mind James - from that little message, it doesn't look like you've got much use for a working keyboard anyway. ;-)

please let this be only a rumor. i don't care if Microsuck does make some decent hardware, their record of buying or partnering with companies and then destroying their product quality is enough for me to fear what they will do to Logitech if they buy it. i'll agree that some of the M$ keyboards and mice are pretty good (battery life was terrible in the one wireless combo i had, but they felt nice to use), but there will remain no incentive for them to maintain high standards if they buy out their only real competition.

it seems they can't stand ANY competition in any market because it shows them up to be the second-rate manufacturer that they are. there needs to be a strong competitor to leverage quality and brand-name recognition against the sheer size of the M$ juggernaut. (reference Intel vs. AMD wars for comparison.)

plus, i HATE giving those bastards any money. if this is true, i'm buying a spare G11 keyboard and some extra MX518 & G5 mice to sock away for the day my current ones die.

So I upgraded my trusty (but thrashed) MS Intellimouse to a new Logitech Laser mouse. I installed all the latest software and dialed it all in.

The Logitech mouse will simultaneously scroll both window panes in Outlook 2003 - the Inbox and the Message Preview. Very annoying for someone who spends all day working in email. After several go-arounds with Logitech support, they finally admitted their product is not compatible with Outlook 2003. Uh-huh.

So the fancy (and expensive) Logitech laser mouse is on backup duty and the old MS Intellimouse is back in the saddle.

The question is, if MS buys Logitech, will their products now become officially compatible with each other? Yeah, I'll hold my breath on that one.

Excellent plan, however, take it one step further. Wait till it's closer to deal time and buy as much Logitech kit as you can, then sit on it til after the merger/takeover. Then return it all.

Check your receipts to make sure you can of course... Costco in Canada has lots of stock and a great return policy!

--Pete

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

too bad business and mega-corporation strategy isn't a democracy:(

If the rumor is true, MS will probably kill the Squeezebox that Logitech acquired from Slim Devices. They'll probably replace it with some monstrosity that rapes your dog and explodes if you attempt to use it to play an AAC file or use a Linux server.

Fortunately, there is a replacement in the same market. Roku Labs has a gadget called the Soundbridge M1001 that looks very similar to the Squeezebox. (Disclaimer: I own neither devices, I am just investigating before I buy one).

So were the Redmond Beast to devour Logitech, the coolest gadget of this brand would at least be replaceable.

Now if someone could make keyboards half as good as my model M, I'd happily stockpile them.