I believe it's the same driver for any current Logitech mouse. I think it supports Logitech keyboards too, but I don't use one of those so from my perspective that's irrelevant.
Bear in mind this 49MB is a compressed archive, so the uncompressed size is probably at least half as much again.
Bear in mind that Damn Small Linux, a fully-functional desktop operating system with applications, fits on 50MB business card CD. Uncompressed.
Hmmm... I think it's not quite as strange as you make out. Increasingly, manufacturers are rolling multiple drivers into one package, for lots of different configurations. If that's one of their 'special' mice with extra buttons, there'll be config files for that too - as well as all the different alternatives for the different versions.
Add in language packs for all languages - which is even worse if they've gone and written something on their images, helpfiles, useful libraries to be installed, and you could easily get in the tens of megs.
Linux, on the other hand, does not deal at all well with bizarrely configured hardware / out of date operating systems, and other languages. Of course, since upgrading to the newest version is free, Linux doesn't have this problem. Logitech probably need to make sure their hardware runs on Windows ME, 2000, XP and Vista, in 8 languages, and with a single download.
Also, frankly, 50Mb is nothing nowadays. With multi-Mb downstream becoming standard, the days of dialup are long gone ;-).
I suspect that you are right and that it's the help files etc. rather than the drivers themselves that make up most of the payload, and they do have their own custom GUI. I agree that the Internet these days is a broadband only club, at least where software downloads are concerned, but, I don;'t know, 50MB still seems like an awful lot for something so minor as a mouse driver.
The comparison above wasn't intended to sing the virtues of Linux over Windows. Damn Small Linux is, after all, a hack, and not a fully functional modern Linux distribution. It does, however, still support far more devices than the Logitech drivers. However, here's perhaps a more direct comparison with Microsoft's equivalent drivers for their hardware. MS Intelipoint 6.10 is 6.5MB. MS Intelitype Pro 6.1 is 6.7MB. So the equivalent software from MS, not known themselves for their devotion to frugality when coding, is only 13.2MB.
Logitech G15 is the likely source of much of the bloat. Its the GOD of gaming keyboards, with a serious macro system (18 keys x 3 "modes" per game = 54 macros per game without on-the-fly modifications), it has an inbuilt LCD display and a lot of apps for that (like system resource monitor, LCD clock, Pop3 mail monitor, media style display etc). It's my precioussssss. It even has a chunky "gaming mode" switch (which basically turns off the windows key which is _very_ handy for gamers ;) ).
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 01:51 am (UTC)okay... so what the heck does this mouse do?
no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 12:32 pm (UTC)Bear in mind this 49MB is a compressed archive, so the uncompressed size is probably at least half as much again.
Bear in mind that Damn Small Linux, a fully-functional desktop operating system with applications, fits on 50MB business card CD. Uncompressed.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 11:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 08:21 pm (UTC)Increasingly, manufacturers are rolling multiple drivers into one package, for lots of different configurations. If that's one of their 'special' mice with extra buttons, there'll be config files for that too - as well as all the different alternatives for the different versions.
Add in language packs for all languages - which is even worse if they've gone and written something on their images, helpfiles, useful libraries to be installed, and you could easily get in the tens of megs.
Linux, on the other hand, does not deal at all well with bizarrely configured hardware / out of date operating systems, and other languages. Of course, since upgrading to the newest version is free, Linux doesn't have this problem. Logitech probably need to make sure their hardware runs on Windows ME, 2000, XP and Vista, in 8 languages, and with a single download.
Also, frankly, 50Mb is nothing nowadays. With multi-Mb downstream becoming standard, the days of dialup are long gone ;-).
no subject
Date: 2007-03-25 12:06 pm (UTC)The comparison above wasn't intended to sing the virtues of Linux over Windows. Damn Small Linux is, after all, a hack, and not a fully functional modern Linux distribution. It does, however, still support far more devices than the Logitech drivers. However, here's perhaps a more direct comparison with Microsoft's equivalent drivers for their hardware. MS Intelipoint 6.10 is 6.5MB. MS Intelitype Pro 6.1 is 6.7MB. So the equivalent software from MS, not known themselves for their devotion to frugality when coding, is only 13.2MB.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-25 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-26 01:22 pm (UTC)Tis a far cry from the days when a mouse driver would come on a floppy disk and not even fill all of it up.