And thank god they have. I’m sure you remember your first wireless USB powered mouse. It likely had a gigantic dongle that hung from the back of your machine like some engorged tumor. You could forget about having multiple devices, too. That meant taking up two USB slots with another similarly engorged appendage.

Thanks to Logitech’s USB Unifying Receiver, we don’t have that problem anymore. The dongle comes as a joint announcement for some other new Logitech products, namely the Wireless Keyboard K350 / K340 and Marathon Mouse M705 / M505. Both devices sync up with the slim USB receiver, which is small enough to leave plugged in, even to a laptop, even while it’s in your laptop bag. Many of you are probably using Bluetooth supported peripherals for your laptops, but it’s certainly nice to have some options.

Each of the four peripherals ship with a Unifying Receiver, and will run you $60/$50 for the keyboards and $70/$50 for the mice. They should be available in early 2010.