mouse : Computer Hardware Buyers’ Glossary

Mice frequently stop working. There is no need to buy a new one. All you need to do is clean them. I will tell you how later in this entry.

Your alternatives are a trackball or a touchpad, often embedded in the keypad.

Double Clicking

Windows requires you often to double click, i.e. click the left mouse button twice, at exactly the right cadence. It can leave you babbling and drooling trying to get the interval just right. If you click too fast your double click gets treated as a single click. If too slow, it gets treated as two single clicks. With a 3-button mouse, you just press the middle mouse button to simulate a perfect double click. Generally, the older you are, the more trouble you will have with double clicks. You can go into the Control Panel ⇒ Mouse and slow down the double click rate. Alternatively right click the desktop ⇒ Personalise ⇒ change mouse pointers. Click apply after each change to make it stick.

Mouse Connections

1. USB (Universal Serial Bus) :

   has a small rectangular connector. Does not require an adaptor card. It fits into a USB port. This is the way to go with a modern computer that has USB ports. This would be your first choice.

2. PS/2:

   Legacy. Has a small round connector. Does not require an adaptor card, but does require a motherboard with a PS/2 mouse connector.

3. Serial mouse:

   Legacy. Usually attaches to com1: connector. You may need an adapter if the mouse and port don’t have the same number of pins. Mice usually have 9 pins and COM (Component Object Model) ports either 9 or 25. Serial mice are not quite as responsive as the other two.

4. Bus mouse:

   Legacy. Requires an adapter card installed in a slot. It is often difficult to find a free IRQ (Interrupt Request) for this style of mouse. These are the most responsive type. They are getting harder to find.

5. Cordless mouse:

   No cord. Aka wireless. Communicates via radio waves. Receiver connects USB port. The batteries needed inside the mouse to handle the radio reception last only about 6 weeks if you don’t take special precautions to turn off the mouse when not in use. Mice batteries used to last about 6 weeks, but now last about 18 months.

Mouse Types

1. Laser mice:

   Latest and greatest. These don’t have a rolling ball. The laser gives finer precision than LED (Light-Emitting Diode) optical. Oddly you can’t see the laser light.

2. Optical mice:

   These don’t have a rolling ball. They use an LED. They don’t need as frequent cleaning and they have no moving parts to wear out. They work by tracking the movement of patterns in the surface they are resting on. They need an interesting variegated surface to work well, not a smooth solid colour. Your pant leg will do. A mouse pad with a fine grid will work best. You want a slippery surface so you can make fine movements easily. No point in wearing the paint off your desk for want of a $2.00 CAD mouse pad.

3. Air mice:

   I have not used one of these. I have just seen one in a retail shop in a sealed box that the retailer would not let me open. Apparently you don’t need a surface. You can wave the mouse around in the air and it will still work. It has a miniature gyroscope in it for air use and an optical sensor for desk use. You use the air mode for gaming or for presentations where you can stand 9.14 metres (10 yards) feet from the computer. I don’t know what sort of precision they are capable of. Manufacturers are too embarrassed to tell, so it is probably fairly bad. They are wireless. Models include the Gyration Air mice or Logitech Air Mouse.

4. Ergonomic:

   Check out the Perfit. In comes is 5 different sizes for precise hand fit.

5. Wheel:

   These have a wheel you spin to scroll without using the those infernal scroll bars. Once you get used to one, you will never go back. My own mouse has two fast scroll buttons in addition.

6. Mechanical:

   Legacy. These use a rolling rubber ball which internally rubs against rollers to spin them. Then the rotations are measured by a toothed wheel blocking a beam of light. These are now obsolete. You can’t even buy them any more.

7. High Resolution

   These are sold primarily as gaming mice, but they really help with fine control, particularly in Paint Shop Pro or similar paint program. I would never go back. Low res is 400 dpi; medium res is 600 dpi; high res is 1000 dpi; 1500- 2000 dpi is gamer.

Logitech

One of my previous mice was a Logitech LX-8 cordless. It had a high resolution which made for much smoother scrolling — very much worth the extra cost. It had 5 buttons. The left and right button have the usual meanings. The wheel also acts as a middle mouse button. Clicking it brings up a 2D scrolling mode similar to the hand mode of the Mac. The wheel wags side to side for horizontal scrolling. My main complaint with it was it was hard to clean. It has crevices that dead skin cells accumulate in. Even worse, it does not slide freely. I frequently clean the feet and the mousepad, which seems to help a bit. The feet don’t seem to be excessively worn. It is as though the feet are sticky. Further, the wells for the feet are not deep enough, and the feet keep sliding out of them. I was always looking for new feet.

Beware, there as a website called Logictech.com that you might mistake for the Logitech website. It tries to give you that illusion by featuring Logitech mouse drivers.

My current mouse is an M310 cordless. See my notes below.

You can use the generic Windows mouse drivers, or download Logitech’s enhanced Setpoint drivers. They give you finer control over how the mouse behaves. Try pressing and holding the scroll wheel for superfast scrolling.

Most Logitech mice come with a wireless receiver. They are pre-configured to talk to each other but not other mice and receivers. If you want to make your old mouse (or old unifying wireless keyboard) also work with the new receiver, you must configure (pair) it to use the new receiver. You do this by going to Logitech.com/unifying and downloading and installing the unifying software. You run the unifying software, and turn the old mouse off then on when it prompts you to. The old mouse will then be reconfigured to use the new receiver. This will only work if your old mouse uses a compatible unifying receiver.

If you want to use the same mouse on two different computers, you will either have to move the receiver to the other computer along with the mouse or reconfigure the mouse with the unifying software back and forth each time you change computers.

Unifying receivers are compatible with the newer more compact nano unifying receivers, but not with plain nano receivers. In particular, the receivers for old and new M310 and M325 mice are compatible.

Mouse Cleaning

A little bottle of hand sanitiser on your desk to clean your hands frequently can stop the mouse from getting sticky in the first place.

Cleaning A Mechanical Ball Mouse

Use an alcohol-soaked Q-tip to clean around inside. You will usually find lint wrapped around the two rollers. Pick away at it with the swab or a wooden toothpick. If you use tweezers be very careful not to scratch the rollers.

Clean the rest of the mouse with a Kleenex and alcohol. If the mouse has grooves, pick the crud out with a wooden toothpick and alcohol swab.

Cleaning An Optical Mouse

Use an alcohol-soaked Q-tip to clean around inside where the light comes out. Often there will be some hairs or lint stuck inside confusing the mouse by reflecting the bright light. Pick it out gently with tweezers being very careful not to scratch the lenses inside.

Clean the rest of the mouse with a Kleenex and alcohol. If the mouse has grooves, pick the crud out with a wooden toothpick and alcohol-soaked swab. I also found a rubber dental probe useful for getting in the cracks. Avoid metal tools since the plastic is quite soft and will scratch easily. The feet are held on only with cheap adhesive. Be gentle with them.

Unfortunately, modern mice are designed with cracks for dirt to get in, but no way to open them up to service and clean them. The left and right click buttons seem to deteriorate, perhaps mechanically, perhaps from dirty electrical contacts or perhaps from dust blocking optical sensors. I can try cleaning them with a blast of compressed air, a poor substitute for being able to disassemble and clean. I treat mice as consumables.

Inside the mouse are tiny switches that the buttons depress when you click them. Make sure there is no dust or debris stuck in the switches, or you will have trouble selecting text (selections will disappear unexpectedly). You might use a small amount of silicone oil to lubricate each switch, removing any excess with a Q-tip.

You also have to clean your mouse pad and the bottom of your mouse every few days for optimum smoothness.

Miscellaneous Mouse Tips

• Find Cursor

  If the mouse cursor disappears, hit Ctrl. You can configure your mouse to send out a set of ripples to help you find it. If it his has hidden offscreen, you must adjust your monitor or video card driver to shrink the display and center it on screen. Click Control Panel ⇒ Click mouse ⇒ Click Pointer Options ⇒ Check off Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key.

• Hide Cursor

  I like to configure the mouse cursor to disappear when I am typing so it does not interfere with reading what I am typing or the text cursor. Click Control Panel ⇒ Click mouse ⇒ Click Pointer Options ⇒ Check off Hide pointer while typing..

• Mouse Feet

  The feet of a mouse are extremely important in how smoothly the mouse performs. You need to replace them ever 8 months or so because they wear and lose their slipperiness. Check before you buy a mouse that replacement feet are available.

• Mouse Acceleration

  Go into the Control Panel ⇒ mouse to speed up the mouse movement and to give it acceleration to let you have find control when moving it slowly and ability to move it rapidly over large distances.

• Mouse Trails

  Go into the Control Panel ⇒ mouse to optionally turn on mouse trails, hide cursor while typing, display cursor position when you hit ctrl etc. Experiment until you get things the way you like.

• Bigger Cursor

  Go into the Control Panel ⇒ mouse to select a better mouse cursor. The default one is tiny and hard to see especially on a large screen. On Vista I used the one called variations. It is animated so it is easier to pick out on a large screen. Another good choice is bronze since the bronze colour shows up well on your typical black and white composition page. Unfortunately, these are not available on Windows 7. You can scan the net for free alternate cursors. They come in sets of about 70 little *.ani and *.cur files. Beware of themes that require installing any additional software or toolbars. The cursors should install by simply right clicking an *.inf file included, and selecting install. You can then select which theme to use with the control panel.

• Footswitch

  The main problem with a mouse is you have to take your right hand off the keyboard to use it. A foot switch or auxiliary keypad can partly compensate for this.

• Sharing

  Synergy lets you share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems without special hardware. It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own display.

• Misalignment

  Sometimes, when you are using a browser, when you click a link it goes to the link one above or below the one you selected.  I don´t have a completely successful fix, but here are some things you can try:

  • Pay attention to which link is highlighted before you click rather than to where you are aiming.
  • Learn to aim high or low.
  • Memorise which part of the cursor is acting as the hot spot.
  • Try a different cursor set. Search with Google to find something appealing.
  • Try a different browser.
  • Try rebooting.

• Fast Scroll/Pan

  Opera browser and Take Command, and Funduc Search Replace each support a super fast scrolling/pan mode, both vertical and horizontal. Most other apps currently do not. It would be nice if they did. I don’t know where the implementation is done, Opera, Take Command, Logitech Setpoint mouse driver, or Windows7. You invoke it with press and hold on the mouse wheel. A special panning cursor appears:
• Some Logitech wireless mice (marked with ) use a unifying receiver. If you get a wireless Logitech keyboard or other wireless device, they can all share the same receiver, thus freeing up USB ports. There is another style of unifying receiver called the nano. It is smaller but incompatible. The USB-2 port limits reports per second to 1000.

Real World Mice

These mice are in ascending order by list price. This approximates the order of street price.

	recommend electronic⇒Logitech M325 Wireless Mouse
	asin	B00550FWUI
DPI and reports per second are not published. Compact size, battery powered cordless mouse. This is what we use on the laptop. It uses infrared outside the visible spectrum. You can’t tell just by looking that it is operating. Comfortable rubbery side grips. 3 Buttons. 3 year warranty, but consider that you will still need to buy a new mouse while you wait for shipping to Logitech and back plus repair time. The one we have is white with a flower pattern. It comes in scores of other colours and patterns. It has a fast easy to control vertical scroll. The wheel spins freely without clicks. It offers almost no resistance to spinning. Works with standard Windows HID drivers or you can download the Logitech Setpoint drivers. The biggest drawback is the feet are not slippery enough. It has finer optical tracking and scrolling precision than the M305 and M310 models. It claims a battery lasts 18 months. I bought it at Future Shop for $30 CAD. Comes in endless colours and patterns. Oddly different colours and patterns vary widely in price. The USB receiver is on the delicate side for a laptop where it can get bumped. It uses the new unifying receiver. It is safest to remove it when moving your laptop. Unfortunately, Logitech makes a dozen different receiver models, so if you break one, you won’t likely be able to substitute one from an old mouse. Happily, Logitech sells replacement unifying receivers if you can wait. For some reason this mouse retails in Canada for three times what it does in the USA. The Source (née Radio Shack) has a better selection of models than most.
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Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock

	recommend electronic⇒Logitech M310 Wireless Mouse
	asin	B003I4FHNA
This is a great mouse, probably the best I have ever owned. 1000 DPI. Reports per second are not published. Full size, battery powered cordless mouse. This is what I use myself. It uses infrared laser outside the visible spectrum. You can’t tell just by looking that it is operating. Comfortable rubbery side grips. 3 Buttons. It uses the nano unifying receiver. The battery lasts far longer than other mice I have tried. 3 year warranty, but consider that you will still need to buy a new mouse while you wait for shipping to Logitech and back plus repair time. It is part of the fantasy collection that comes in five patterns/colours plus endless patterns. Oddly different colours and patterns vary widely in price. Unlike most mice, it is easy to pop off the cover to clean it inside. It has a fast easy to control vertical scroll, though I would prefer an accelerating vertical scroll. My finger gets tired vertically scrolling. The movement is unusually smooth. It works with standard Windows HID drivers or you can download the Logitech Setpoint drivers. The biggest drawback is the feet are not slippery enough though they are not worse than average. If I roll it directly over my wood-grain desktop, it works, but the mouse moves slowly. It seems to like a light-coloured surface. Even a piece of plain white paper with no pattern works fine. With a dark background the mouse becomes sluggish. The mouse thinks it is not moving as fast as it actually is. I have some hypotheses why this might be so: the mouse uses more power on a dark background since less light reflects back. If batteries are failing, it can’t generate enough light and the mouse will become sluggish. dark backgrounds reflect less light, and looks more uniform to the mouse, so the mouse misses more changes in what it sees as it whips by. If may be that dust obscures the lens, making it miss movement. New batteries will usually help a sluggish mouse, even if the control panel indicator says the old ones are fine. The bottom line is the M310 must have a light-coloured mouse pad to work properly. The other big problem with it is it is too easy to accientally hit the right mouse button when dragging. I don’t know why this is. If the mouse wheel stops working, just power off the computer (not the mouse) and power on again.
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	recommend electronic⇒Microsoft wireless mobile 4000 Mouse
	asin	B002DPUUL4
DPI and reports per second are not published. Full size, battery powered cordless mouse. This is what I used myself, the lime green model. It comes in black, pink, teal, berry and lime green. I don’t recommend it. 3 Buttons. It did not work on a black mouse pad even though they advertised advanced BlueTrack technology that should run anywhere. I had to use it on the wood grain desk top. The mouse wheel does not click as it moves. It is advertised to have both laser and LED. I see no sign of anything but a blue LED. It is quite a bit jerkier than the old Logitech. The transceiver is tiny. It plugs into any free USB port. I found trying different ports would improve jerkiness. I found it worked best plugged into a USB extender cord (left over from the old Logitech mouse) so that the receiver sits about 20 cm (7.87 in) from the mouse. There is a traveling storage slot for the transceiver housed in the mouse, which might be confusing to someone who does not understand the physics. It does not have feet, rather two large semicircular arcs. I trust that will provide extra wear. It advertises extremely long battery life, but I get only 3 weeks, much worse than my previous Logitech. The mouse has a Mickey Mouse exposed spring near the light sensor. I don’t know what its function is other than to interfere with cleaning. It died after a few months with the cursor too jerky to use and the mousewheel frozen. This a dog, but a handsome dog.
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	recommend electronic⇒Logitech V220 Cordless Optical
	asin	B0028K2TUY
Logitech V220 cordless optical mouse is a small, basic, inexpensive mouse designed for notebooks that comes in 8 colours/patterns. 1000 dpi.
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	recommend electronic⇒Rhino Washable Mouse
	asin	B003SEUFUA
Wireless. You can put it is a dishwasher to clean it.
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	recommend electronic⇒Seal Shield Washable Mouse
	asin	B0013FA8R6
Seal Shield Medical Grade Washable Scroll Mouse,optical, USB. Completely sealed. Covered in soft silicone.
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	recommend electronic⇒Logitech G400 Gaming Optical Wired Mouse — Metal
	asin	B0055QZ216
1600 dpi. Gaming mouse. I used a model similar to this, the MX500. The feet tend to come off easily. It is difficult to clean. It has a solid feel.
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	recommend electronic⇒Logitech Anywhere Mouse MX
	asin	B002HWRJBC
1500 dpi. 125 reports per second. Rechargeable cordless mouse. Dark field laser for use on wide variety of surfaces including glass. Encrypted transmissions to deter spying. Hyperfast scrolling. This is an office mouse, not a gaming mouse. Smaller, for portable computers. This is a smaller version of the Performance MX mice.
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	recommend electronic⇒Logitech Wireless Gaming Mouse G700
	asin	B003VAM32E
Logitech’s top of the line laser mouse with all the bells and whistles for gaming.
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	recommend electronic⇒Logitech MX Performance Mouse
	asin	B002HWRJBM
1500 dpi. 125 reports per second. Rechargeable cordless mouse. Dark field laser for use on wide variety of surfaces including glass. Encrypted transmissions to deter spying. Hyperfast scrolling. This is an office mouse, not a gaming mouse.
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Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock

	recommend electronic⇒Evoluent Vertical Mouse 3
	asin	B000O3OEGE
Evoluent VM3R2-RSB Vertical Mouse 3 is an ergonomic mouse where you grasp it on the side instead of the top. Diagrams show why this might be easier on your wrist.
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	recommend electronic⇒Logitech LX8 Laser Cordless Mouse
	asin	B000ZH7E5M
Logitech has stopped publishing specifications. 5 buttons. Relatively inexpensive, sensible mouse for non-gaming. This is what I used myself. Not recommended. The extra buttons are really useful. I just kept hitting them by mistake. Hard to clean.
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	recommend electronic⇒Logitech G5 Laser Mouse
	asin	B000ODN7VM
2000 dpi. 1000 reports per second. Premium gaming mouse. Variable tuning weights.
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	recommend electronic⇒Logitech G7 Laser Cordless Mouse
	asin	B000AY5Y5W
2000 dpi. 500 reports per second. Gaming mouse. Cordless radio link.
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Future Mice

• Make it possible to open the mouse up to clean it out.
• Use optical sensors for all the buttons instead of mechanical switches so they will always closes cleanly and reliably.
• Models of mouse with different degrees of default sensitivity, including amount of pressure needed to click the buttons.
• Seat the mouse feet in a well perhaps a millimeter deep so they will last for the life of the mice.
• Use the extra buttons on the mouse to invoke copy/paste/delete
• Store the a stack of the last copied clips and let you paste any one of them.
• Let you program some of the extra keys as a common keyed phrase.
• Put any extra buttons on the top, not the side where you can accidentally squeeze them. Alternatively, make the mouse taller so buttons on the sides won’t be inadvertently squeezed simply is the process of holding the mouse.
• A tiny accelerometer inside the mouse so that the controller in the mouse can automatically turn off the laser when the mouse has not moved for a while and turn it back on as soon as the user moves it.
• Design the mouse and controller so that even if the CPU (Central Processing Unit) fails to pay attention to reports for a second because it is pathologically busy, it does not lose position or clicks.
• A warranty that gives you a new mouse from any dealer selling the mouse. This covers wear on the feet and worn out click detectors. You have to pay a replacement fee depending on the age of the mouse. The dealer may optionally repair the mouse, e.g. applying new feet on the spot. You don’t have to wait for shipping to and from the factory. You won’t be without a mouse for more than a few hours. Alternatively, the dealer can give you a loaner mouse till yours is fixed. As it is, if your mouse dies, you have to buy a new one even if you have a warranty.