Wireless mouse?

[vgqn]

I love my iMac, but I hated the wireless mouse that came with it. I want to buy a different one with 2 buttons and a scroll wheel. What do I need to know about wireless mice? The array is bewildering. I don't want/need a billion buttons, but I do want sensitive, accurate movement. What's the difference between the $16.99 models and the $49.99 models?

I'm running OS 10.4.11 on a 2 GHz Intel Core Duo.

Comments

Off hand...

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

I'd say the difference is $33.00.

Is the iMac using Bluetooth? I don't think you'll find a lot of $16.99 models that do. Most have a USB dongle that you probably won't want.

After that, I'd go to a computer store and find one that feels comfortable.

Re: Off hand...

[webbob.livejournal.com]

What he said: get a mouse with Bluetooth wireless, you probably won't need the USB dongle that comes with it.

There's a "Bluetooth Setup Assistant" in either the main Applications folder or the Utilities folder inside Applications, and you might need to use that to "pair" your new mouse with your computer.

Other than that, my only advice is to buy the mouse from a store with a liberal return policy, so if you find that it doesn't fit your hand or you otherwise don't like it, you're not stuck with it.

Oh, and since some people actually like the "MightyMouse" with the little trackball thingie, you can probably get either gratitude or money for passing it along to somebody else. Or trade it for a wired mouse against the day when the battery in the wireless mouse fails unexpectedly and you need a way to start up the Bluetooth Setup Assistant with a dead wireless mouse.

Re: Off hand...

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

I have a wired mouse I'm using now, and you bet I'll keep it as back up. Good tip on return policy. Thanks!

[miramon.livejournal.com]

Symptoms of cheap wireless mice (I once had a particularly bad one made by Trust, who seem to specialise in low-quality rip-offs) include:

- Poor battery life
- Mouse keeps losing contact with system and has to be re-synched
- No sideways mousewheel movement
- Generally cheap plastic and poor ergonomics
- Buttons break/stick
- Poor responsiveness so that the cursor lags behind mouse movement

This last was the real killer. A good mouse reports its position far more often than a bad mouse. As a result, bad mice tend to lead to general frustration since you keep over-shooting or under-shooting and clicking on the wrong thing.

The Apple Mighty Mouse is actually quite good quality once you've learned to deal with its two quirks (mistakes right button for left button unless you lift the left button finger right off the mouse before clicking, and the scrollwheel gets gummed up so you have to use lighter fluid to clean it).

If you want a replacement for the Apple mouse, I would recommend getting a Logitech, though I have quite a nice Kingston presenter's mouse. eleyan bought a cheap wireless mouse (one of the ones that comes with it's own Bluetooth receiver) recently and just couldn't get the PC to recognise it at all.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I have a Logitech wired mouse that I've been using for years (had it on my previous Mac and brought it over when the wireless Mac mouse battery died). I've liked it, so I've been looking at theirs. Maybe the MX1000.