Logitech... used to love them but for the past 6 or 8 months they've been pissing me off!  They're getting to be like ATI - great hardware but the software is annoying or screws your stuff up!

Let's say you have one of their classic Elite/multimedia style of keyboards... maybe like this one:
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/downloads/software/US/EN,CRID=1796,contentid=6015
... with the nice scroll wheel at the left edge of the keyboard.  You can assign it to do many different things but the one thing I love having it for is volume control.  Through their iTouch software you assign various things to the various extra buttons.  iTouch always runs in the background, has an icon down by the windows clock and starts when you logon.  Simple and effective.  Now, I have about 12 of those extra buttons on my keyboard that I never, EVER  touch.  The only one I really care about is the scroll wheel at the left edge :)  It means I don't have to reach for the volume knob on my speakers or take a 5 to 6 click multiple window/tab/pane approach to adjusting the volume.  Thanks to this marvelous little underappreciated wonder of technology when something comes along really loud I wasn't expecting and BAM my volume is down to 10 in under a second!

I like my keyboard's 'volume wheel' so much that I bought 2 keyboards years ago... not the same but they both have the wheel and need the iTouch software.

K... fast forward to today.  I got a new mouse because I've never liked the Mx310 I've had very much.  The shape of it isn't quite right, the pinky finger located button is nearly useless as well as the button under the first knuckle of my middle finger.  Lately I've been using the Mx310 on my new machine and my pinky finger has been getting sore - even when I'm not playin a game - just from using the damned mouse as any coimputer user would.  So I've been looking for a new mouse but not seriously.  I just kinda look around when I'm in a store to see what they have and how much.  My favorite Logitech mouse is my Mouseman Dual Optical.  The shape is just about the most perfect IMO but it's only got 4 buttons.  It's accurate as all hell too - never have problems.  The Dually and the Mx310 both used Logitech's MouseWare to mess with settings and special buttons.

Today I came across a Logitech Mx518 for $35. http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/details/US/EN,CRID=2142,CONTENTID=10121  So I grabbed it.  All of these single LED optical mice irritate me because they don't like my custom mousing surface that I made for my dual LED optical mouse.  Years ago I printed out a very fine/tiny black grid on white paper and put it under some translucent/frosted plastic.  Made sense to me... the opticals want something to 'track' and what better than a grid, RIGHT???  Works awesome for the dually, not for any single LED optical I've tried... go figure.

Anyway... I put a plain piece of paper under my piece of plastic so the Mx518 would stop getting lost on my grid.  Dammit.

The Mx518 comes with Logitech's SetPoint software.  It's just like the iTouch for keyboards and Mouseware for mice in that it allows you to set/map special buttons and some other settings, but it's an all-in-one app for both keyboards and mice.  Sounds good  to me... why have 2 apps running and demanding resources when one candle handle the same job?

I installed the SetPoint software as 'Mouse only' since my keyboard uses iTouch and all was good... or so I thought.  I was browsing some Youtube vids and one came along I couldn't hear... so I went for my handy dandy awesome volume wheel... and nothing happened!  I started freaking out!  I went to the iTouch control panel to see WTF was up with my settings... and the settings WEREN'T EVEN THERE ANYMORE!  I was sweating at this point... and cursing the fuck out of Logitech.  I spent the next 45 minutes googling and finding nothing that exactly matched what I was experiencing so I uninstalled SetPoint.  Upon reboot I still had no volume control on my keyboard and the settings were still missing in iTouch.

Through pure trial and error I found that I have to install the older iTouch software AFTER installing SetPoint and both apps and all settings can co-exist without problems!  I still think it's retarded that you have to do it this way and when I COULDN'T find anything on Logitech's site explaining what I've experienced and how to fix it I decided to let it out here... because here is just as good as sending it to Logitech.  They obviously don't give a shit anymore when it comes to software support - hell maybe they never did and I didn't mind because in the past the only big problems I had with a Logitech product was with one of their gamepads and it was a shoddy hardware/component problem in that case... and they didn't care about that/didn't respond to complaints about it in the support forums for that piece of hardware at the time.

As a side note... cordless mice and keyboards are great for people who don't mind their limitations.  I like cords.

In conclusion...
Logitech Hardware:
  Mouseman Dual Optical = 10
  Mx310 = 5
  Mx518 = 8 (ask me again after 2 weeks of use and I bet my rating drops)
  Elite multimedia keyboard = 6 (it has a fuckin F-lock button that drives me insane)
  Internet Navigator keyboard = 8
Logitech Software:
  MouseWare = 7 (possibly a problem where it loses middle-click - never confirmed my exact problem)
  iTouch = 8 (for older keyboards)
  SetPoint = 9 (keyboards and mice)
  iTouch + SetPoint on same machine = 5
  Profiler = 8 (game controllers)