Nov 19, 2013 - Logitech's $70 Bluetooth Ultrathin Touch Mouse T631 for Mac aims to solve. (Lefties, you can swap these actions using Logitech's software.).
2 Shares There are mice and there are trackpads. Since Apple revamped what it meant to be a trackpad, many mouse users have flocked to trackpads, with all their touch gestures and non-moving hands. You may call that growth; I call it laziness. I don’t hate touch gestures, far from it. I use my iPad and never touch the home button thanks to the magnetic on-off switch from my case, switching apps with a four-finger swipe up, or closing apps with a five-finger pinch. As much as I like pressing physical buttons, I like doing things quickly and efficiently more. Touchpads just aren’t there yet.
Not on OS X, and certainly not on Windows 8. With the former there are a lot of great gestures but the customization options are ridiculously limited (and limiting). For the latter, by itself the touch gestures are few and far between, but with a good hardware/software maker you can have a ton of nifty features with a lot of customization. The problem is having the capable hardware and compatible softwareall in one machine.
More to the point, regular mice are far more intuitive. We’ve all used them for decades, and they work really, really well.
![Mac Driver For T630 Mac Driver For T630](http://support.lexmark.com/library/LEXMARK/Mac%20OS%20X/HowToSetUp/images/MenuBar.jpg)
They’ve gone through a serious maturation process, all the way back to the 60’s. High-end mice range from 30-button monstrosities to very sharp, very powerful devices, many of which Logitech has built. As I write this review I’m using the, which has so much great hardware that it’s impossible to deny that the mouse is king. Touchpads, however, will have a place once the OS’s of tomorrow become the OS’s of today and software makers wake up. In the meantime, Logitech gives us the Ultrathin Touch Mouse T630, a travel-size mouse very similar to the except that it’s way better shaped, far simpler to use, and works on any computer, regardless of operating system. In other words, the T630 is the first step into a proper touchpad mouse. The first thing you notice is how clean the whole thing is, almost to a fault.
Logitech ships the T630 in a practically-sterile clear hard plastic box (see image above). It’s a gorgeous display, and after you look at the T630 up close, it’s a gorgeous mouse too. Supremely thin, beautifully shaped with sleek, sharp lines and an incredible razor-thin black top over an aluminum undercarriage. It looks more at home on a racetrack than at a workstation or beside a laptop. Ridiculously clean and tidy, the Ultrathin certainly lives up to its name. It’s tiny at just over an inch thick at it’s thickest point. When Logitech says it fits in the pocket, they aren’t kidding; I took it with me to work and, rushing out of the house, threw it into my pocket before a doctor’s appointment and didn’t realize it was there the whole time.
Getting in and out of the car, going face-up and face-down on a table, and changing seating positions at least a half dozen times. That’s after I took out my phone, keys, and wallet. I didn’t even remember it was there.
Small size isn’t everything. One of the problems with the Wedge was that it was awesomely small, but the dimensions weren’t uniform whatsoever. Not the case with the T630, but it is very small and tough to recommend for using more than two hours at a time, especially if you’re using the mouse a lot. If that’s the case, stick with a larger mouse like the Performance Mouse MX. However, the T630 is very comfortable and I enjoyed using it a lot, both traveling about and in the office.
Like a number of Logitech’s latest products, the T630 has a Bluetooth switch so that you can assign it to multiple devices, in this case two. The switch, on the bottom of the mouse, isn’t the most useful for a mouse. While keyboards work for just about anything (computers, tablets, smartphones), mice are mostly unnecessary on “smart” devices, though most versions of Android do support it. I found it helpful as someone who bounces between multiple computers. If you travel and have to use someone else’s computer for any reason, the ability to set it up properly without disabling your own machine’s Bluetooth settings is convenience reborn. The only part that was difficult to test was the battery, which has lasted over three weeks without the need to charge.
Logitech claims that a minute of charge from completely empty will give an hour of battery life. Based on Logitech’s claims on battery life from previous products, I believe them.
The placement of the USB connector does prohibit using the mouse while charging however, which is a strange choice. Considering the size of the mouse however, using it while plugged in would be difficult because the cable would cause too much negative force and make using the mouse uncomfortable. As a “Touch Mouse”, the Ultrathin works tremendously well on all three major platforms: Windows 7, Windows 8, and OS X.
Once users install the included software, a number of swipe gestures become available for customization, each limited to what the OS supports. On Windows 7, gestures include back and forward, opening the start menu, switching applications, hiding the desktop, and basic scrolling functions. Two additional gestures exist for Win8, opening the charms menu and displaying the app bar. OS X has much more functionality that includes all of OS X’s gesture commands with limited exception. After a day of use, I thought I loved the T630, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing.
On my MacBook Pro I realized exactly what that was: the inability to tap instead of click. As much as the Ultrathin Touch Mouse supports touch, it only really supports touch gestures, not tapping. Users can’t tap to click, or two-finger tap for a separate function. Every machine, Windows- or Mac-based, support basic tap features, but the T630 doesn’t. As far as any touch mouse goes, that should be a requirement, or at least something that users can set and customize.
Then again, the Ultrathin Touch Mouse T630 is the best touch-sensitive mouse ever built. By a longshot. You could point to the Apple Magic Mouse as an ample competitor, and it certainly is, but the feel and design never broached the threshold of “yes, this is the mouse I’ve always wanted.” Logitech’s T630 (and T631, it’s albino twin brother) does. The fact that both models work on any of today’s main operating systems is already huge, and that the mice work flawlessly on any machine is a testament to just how well built and designed they are. It’s the first mouse that even made me think that could incorporate all of the touch features of a trackpad straight onto a moving mouse, and let the user decide what they like.
It’s a glorious step forward. Bottom Line: Good luck finding a better travel mouse. This blows everything else out of the water, no matter what kind of computer you have. Awesome mouse, the best I’ve had since I decided to smash the apple magic onto the desk for being so annoying.
Reading the other comments I’d also love to have the tap option, as this mouse has the loudest click of all mice. This drives my wife mad, why oh why did they have to put a click beetle in it???
I had an issue with the Mac drivers, worked perfectly with the first set of drivers. Then after an update the inertia scroll would stop working if you scrolled while it was still scrolling from inertia. It would start working again as soon as the mouse cursor left the window and came back. I’ve got used to it now, since it was just too much for Logitech’s support team to comprehend. There first response was “Try unplugging the USB cable and re-insterting it again” what morons. Gadget Review works with a variety of advertisers to help monetize the site’s traffic. This is what allows us to offer our content free of charge or without a paywall.
Because of this, some of the links on this page may earn us a commission when you click thru and purchase from the associated site. However, at no time, and will it never affect our rankings or judgment of the product(s) in discussion or under evaluation. In short, we’ll always remain objective and find you the best products regardless of any monetary incentive. You can read more about our for additional insight on this matter.
I have a Lexmark T630 b/w laser printer with USB and IP connectivity. With 10.6.8 I could print happily over Ethernet to the printer from iMacs (wired), mini (wired) and MBP (wireless). With Lion on one of the iMacs and on the MBP I can't print over Ethernet. The print queue shows a job 'Supply levels' in the print queue and does not print. The printer is activated and this job appears as soon as I select the print dialog in apps (not actually select 'Print', just opening the print dialog).
I moved the printer to be USB connected to my Airport Extreme and get the same symptoms, except the 'Supply levels' job prints a single line of symbols (mainly Spanish characters with some other symbols and ending in 2 smileys. It is always the same set of symbols, so I get this one line of junk on a page and then my print job prints. Note that the T630 has.never.
displayed supply levels in any version of the OS. The line printed is below. This always happens from the Lion machines and does not happen from the other iMac which is still running 10.6.8, or from a mini which is connected on another network to the network port of the printer. The mini is also running 10.6.8. I have downloaded the latest Lexmark drivers from Apple and also from Lexmark (same version of driver either way) and it makes no difference.
I can't find anything on the Apple Support site or the Lexmark support site. It definitely looks like an issue with the printing system in Lion - both the phantom job and the activation of the printer as soon as a print dialog is opened. Anyone have a fix for this? The phantom print job will be a Postscript file to check the printer status. This process has been around since 10.5 but it usually is responded to silently by the printer rather than it sitting in the print queue. If you don't have the Supply Levels menu in Options & Supplies for this printer in Snow Leopard then it would suggest that Lexmark has changed the PPD for Lion.
So you could try creating another print queue on Lion but this time selecting the Generic Postscript driver included with Lion. This should let you print but provides few options. It it does work then at least you have an easy workaround. Another possible fix would be copying the T630 PPD from Snow Leopard and replacing the T630 PPD in Lion. The PPD for both OS's are stored in /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources.
With the SL T630 PPD copied, you can open the and select to modify the T630 queue. From this page select the T630 printer and from the next page change the Adminstration drop menu to Modify Printer.
You will be prompted for your Mac admin user name and password. After entering these details you see the first page showing the print queue. Select Continue and probably Continue again until you see the page where you can change the printer make and model. Here is also the section to browse for a PPD. Browse to the T630 PPD from Snow Leopard and then press Modify Printer.
Now you can see if all that effort was worth it. The PCL SmartSwitch was probably the cause of the printed page.
In many cases, if you have a PCL printer and send PS data to it you will get a page or pages of symbols. So disabling this probably forces the printer into the Postscript personality and thus stops the data being processed as a print job. As for the supply levels page, this has to be something with the T630 PPD. I don't believe it is a Lion setting, as I have been printing to Postscript printers with Lion using Generic PS and vendor supplied PPDs and I don't get this page. If you open the CUPS Printer page again, select the T630 and then change the Administration menu to Set Default Options, you can look through the settings under the General menu to see if the Supply Levels page is mentioned there. You can also open System Information and under the Hardware heading in the left pane select the Printers entry. The top right pane will show the printers installed.
Select the T630 and then the bottom right pane will show information about the printer. For the entry Printer Commands, if you see something like Report Levels then this could be the cause. The phantom print job will be a Postscript file to check the printer status. This process has been around since 10.5 but it usually is responded to silently by the printer rather than it sitting in the print queue. If you don't have the Supply Levels menu in Options & Supplies for this printer in Snow Leopard then it would suggest that Lexmark has changed the PPD for Lion. So you could try creating another print queue on Lion but this time selecting the Generic Postscript driver included with Lion.
This should let you print but provides few options. It it does work then at least you have an easy workaround. Another possible fix would be copying the T630 PPD from Snow Leopard and replacing the T630 PPD in Lion. The PPD for both OS's are stored in /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources. With the SL T630 PPD copied, you can open the and select to modify the T630 queue. From this page select the T630 printer and from the next page change the Adminstration drop menu to Modify Printer. You will be prompted for your Mac admin user name and password.
After entering these details you see the first page showing the print queue. Select Continue and probably Continue again until you see the page where you can change the printer make and model. Here is also the section to browse for a PPD. Browse to the T630 PPD from Snow Leopard and then press Modify Printer.
Now you can see if all that effort was worth it. Thanks for the info on CUPS. It didn't solve the problem but it was useful info. It wasn't actually the problem, as I tried using the earlier driver from 10.6.8 abd no change, so I started going through every setting on the printer menu. I turned off PCL SmartSwitch and Mac Binary PS and the junk page went away.
I still get it printing a Supply levels page every time I access the printer, even if I print to PDF rather than to the printer, but at least I am not wasting a page every time I print now. Is there any way to turn off the Supply levels job completely. It is annoying to have the printer wake up and do its pre-checks every time I touch a print dialogue. This appears to be something in the printing system rather than the actual printer driver, since there are lots of people with different printers seeing the same thing. Surely there is some way to disable the automatic submission of this job every time the printing system is accessed, since it has only happened with recent releases.
![Mac driver for t630 mouse Mac driver for t630 mouse](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1H_O3T5Clkk/VOLHmVZAS1I/AAAAAAAADVg/h9BuThFKqBs/s1600/Lexmark%2Bt630.jpg)
Is it a 'feature' of the latest versrion of CUPS or something else which has been designed in by accident and nobody can be bothered to fix? All I need now is a way to be able to set the printer defaults once on the Airport Extreme without having to do it on each machine individually. The PCL SmartSwitch was probably the cause of the printed page. In many cases, if you have a PCL printer and send PS data to it you will get a page or pages of symbols. So disabling this probably forces the printer into the Postscript personality and thus stops the data being processed as a print job. As for the supply levels page, this has to be something with the T630 PPD. I don't believe it is a Lion setting, as I have been printing to Postscript printers with Lion using Generic PS and vendor supplied PPDs and I don't get this page.
If you open the CUPS Printer page again, select the T630 and then change the Administration menu to Set Default Options, you can look through the settings under the General menu to see if the Supply Levels page is mentioned there. You can also open System Information and under the Hardware heading in the left pane select the Printers entry. The top right pane will show the printers installed.
Select the T630 and then the bottom right pane will show information about the printer. For the entry Printer Commands, if you see something like Report Levels then this could be the cause. You would have to modify the PPD by removing the entry ReportLevels. If you open the T630 PPD in TextEdit you will see the entry.cupsCommands: 'PrintSelfTestPage ReportLevels' So if you remove this and then have this modified PPD and then replace the PPD via CUPS as per the previous instruction then this may help.
But thinking about it more I am concerned that the Supply Page you mention is being generated by another driver setting, as I think this Report Levels setting is for showing the levels via the print queue rather than the generation of the printed page. I have a MBP running Lion and printing to a Lexmark X203 without any problems. Yesterday I installed a new 27' iMac and had exactly the same problems as reported above. I spent over an hour on the phone with Apple support and got nowhere but based on what we had tried, this is what I did. In Macintosh HD/Library/Printers there is a folder Lexmark. Move the one on the non-functioning machine to somewhere else and replace it with a copy of the one from the functioning machine. Make sure you know which folder is which and don't delete anything until you are sure what you are doing.
It's inelegant but it works. I also have a Brother QL 500 and this works on both machines without a problem. Apple Footer. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations captured in an electronic forum and Apple can therefore provide no guarantee as to the efficacy of any proposed solutions on the community forums.
Apple disclaims any and all liability for the acts, omissions and conduct of any third parties in connection with or related to your use of the site. All postings and use of the content on this site are subject to the.