Flipping the mouse over you'll probably notice first the large grey polytetrafluoroethylene feet. Your mouse now probably has four little contact pads that help with making gliding smoother, but if you've ever put any after-marked mouse "skates" over these feet you'll notice that the friction between the desk and the mouse lessens by a large degree. The very large feet on the G7 are essentially a stock version of any aftermarket feet you can add on. So right out of the box the G7 has a very low friction contact with any surface you may use it on.

There is no "red glow" on the bottom of the G7 like your optical mouse may have now, that's because the G7 uses Logitech's gaming-grade laser engine. Much like the MX1000 mouse from Logitech started, the optical interface in the G7 is a real laser, not just a reflected LED.

Slightly up from the laser is a tiny green power button with a green power LED above it. The G7 has an intelligent sleep feature, so when you shut down your computer or the mouse is inactive long enough the mouse will go into sleep mode which will help increase battery life.

(Click to enlarge)

At the back half of the bottom you'll see an angled in compartment for a Li-Ion battery pack, which is the G7s power source of choice. Logitech includes 2 of these rechargeable packs, one for the mouse and one to keep in the charging station so if you run out of charge mid-game you can easily switch and not have to wait for your mouse to charge. The battery compartment in both the mouse and charging station is spring loaded so the pack will fling outward slightly when you press the eject button. As practical as battery packs are for this mouse, it does raise two questions:
1) Will replacement packs be easily available?
2) Are replacement packs priced reasonably?
I personally don't want to have the pack be charged out in a year only to find out that replacements either aren't easily available or that I'll have to pay half the price of the mouse for a new battery pack.

Now to talk about the other two items included with the mouse, the 2.4ghz receiver and the charging station. The charging station is a tiny box measuring approximately 7x6.5x4cm (LxWxH) that has a slit in the front where you insert the battery pack that is not in use for charging. The LED on the top will flash when the pack is charging and stay solid when it's ready for use. There is an eject button in the front right corner to get the pack out. For those who want faster charging, there is a switch on the bottom that will switch it between "Normal Mode" and "Boost Mode". Boost mode is recommended to be used with a powered USB port or hub as it uses more power than required in normal mode. On the top of the charging station there is a USB port which is angled out and upward slightly. This is recommended to put the very small 2.4ghz receiver in so you can easily position it anywhere as well as take it out quickly to use the mouse with a laptop if you're on the go and want to take a good mouse along.

Installation:
Physical installation of the G7 simply involves plugging the charging station into an available USB port then plugging the USB receiver into the top of the charging station. Lastly, slide a battery pack into the mouse and you're spare one into the charging bay.

The last step to installing the mouse is to install the Logitech SetPoint mouse software. It's the SetPoint software that really gives the G7 and it's many features a breath of life.

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Testing:
To test the G7 I put it through several days of hard use, it was pretty much used from the time I woke up until I went to bed. I did everything from just my regular work in Windows XP as well as playing a wide variety of games.

Right from the minute I plugged the G7 in and made the first movement, I loved it. This is a very comfortable mouse to use and it has a great deal of accuracy to it. The mouse itself moved very freely on my mouse surface making precision movements a piece of cake. Having the adjustable resolutions is definitely the big feature on this mouse and playing around with that feature, I easily fell in love. There is definitely a very noticeable change when you switch between different DPI settings between 400 and 2000 which are the stock low and high speeds. Using the SetPoint software, it is possible to program mid-high and low-mid speeds as well. On the mouse, you'll know you are using one of these because the top two sensitivity LED's, or bottom two, will light up indicating you are on one of those speeds. Set point allows you to chose the DPI on the X and Y axis for all modes.

Never once during almost a week of heavy use did the G7 cut out, lag or complete lose it's signal. It always worked and it always worked amazingly well.

One thing I did notice, is that the battery life isn't amazing on this mouse. I'd average about a 1.5 to 2 day span before the battery pack would run dead. Having an extra already charged in the charger, made switching it out not a problem though.