Mice are furry, right? (Microsoft Basic Mouse)

Member Name: islander13957

Product:	Microsoft Basic Mouse
Date:	24/12/00 (42 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A well-tempered mouse is a pleasure to work with.

Disadvantages: Just one more computer chore.....

Yuck - his mouse had furballs!

Teenage son wanted to go on the Internet this morning and, since mine is the only computer with a modem in this household (for obvious reasons!) that meant he was hogging it for over an hour.

I really wanted to go over some of my Dooyoo opinions and possibly (if I could find some inspiration) make a start on another one, so I sloped off into his room with my notebook and floppy disk. After all, if he was using my computer then it was only fair that I should use his....

I booted it, inserted my floppy and laid my hand on his Microsoft mouse. What on earth was this? The mouse pointer was all over the screen, jerking and sticking and generally almost unusable. How on earth does he play Unreal Tournament and Midtown Madness with such a sulky rodent? I found myself wondering.

In the year or so since we built him this computer, I've managed to get him trained to use utility programs to defrag his hard disk when it gets messy, to optimize his Registry every now and again (since he installs and deletes so many games and demos) and even dust off his keyboard from time to time. But cleaning his mouse? For some reason he much prefers to leave that to Mum....

It's not as if it's a time-consuming or difficult task although it can be a real chore if you let the crud build up on the ball or rollers. A pair of tweezers, a few strips of sellotape and an only just damp cotton bud will soon bring a poorly mouse back to perfect working order without recourse to the vet.

So, before I could even start to write, I have to open up the rodent and delve about inside to remove the sticky accumulations on the rollers. I find myself wondering if he'll even notice.. but surely he can't possibly miss the fact that his mouse is suddenly silky-smooth and responsive? But then I remember that I'm talking about a teenager here........

Attitudes to mice can be very puzzling, considerin
g one is such a vital part of a computer. I was talking to a retired friend in the summer and he was lamenting about the fact that mice didn't last that long. It turned out that he'd had three in twelve months! Admittedly, a basic mouse is so cheap that it's almost disposable but he had no idea that it could be opened up and cleaned so easily. When his rodent started to play up, he simply threw it away as worn-out and bought a new one!

Perhaps I should think about getting teenage son one of the new Microsoft optical mice for his birthday in March - at least I won't get called upon to scrape the crud off the rollers after that!

Summary: