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 ;-).
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