Wireless Mice, oh the trouble

Why are wireless mice such a problem?

#1 I had a Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 on my desktop setup for a long time. The wheel was squeaky the last year, I didn’t like how it felt in the first place, so I got a Logitech Marble wired mouse and never did anything with the wireless one, until I needed it elsewhere.

#2 I took the same wireless mouse from #1 and put it to use with a broken screen laptop setup with a wired keyboard and monitor for one of my kids, a teenager. Dongle installed, connected mouse worked fine, then one day kid got mad with what he was doing, says he just put it down hard, didn’t throw it, demostrated and I understand what he did, shouldn’t have done anything but … the darn thing won’t work anymore, I mean the lights are on but no one is home. It won’t connect to the dongle.

#3  Got a new wireless mouse for that laptop setup, a Logitech M135. It’s a laser mouse, not optical, so different. Apparently it works fine, but sometimes the battery moves around and has to be replacement-ed for it to work again, but does fast (at least there’s that much, it works!)

#4 I looked up a previous mouse I had used, but lost use of when it’s dongle went back to the store with the malfunctioning motherboard … oops. Found it easily in a box, put a battery in it, wow! OMG it has a Logitech name and the Unifying logo. I went online and ordered a dongle for my long forgotten M215. WHY all this time … I didn’t know/realize that, so all week, this very week, I waited for that dongle to arrive, today the day! I got the packaged ripped it open, put it in my computers USB front slot and downloaded the Unifying software, turned on the mouse, paired and was flying with it. I love a mouse with a scroll wheel that is fast and feels good in my hand, I also love the Trackball mouse I have, it’s just two different sorts of mice, and I was so glad to have two that didn’t squeak at all. 🙂

#5 Just hours after setting up the Logitech Wireless mouse … I picked it up and there was no movement of my cursor. uh oh, looked underneath, it was turned to ON but no lights. I turned it off, then on, still nothing. Searched online, fiddled with it and after learning pretty much nothing helpful, I found something old in their forums that said to click left/right alternately for about 30 seconds, that might reset a mouse if there’s a button under there. OK well, as I was fiddling with it, I inadvertently did something as the same point, I looked down and voila! It was on!

It connected to my computer moved my cursor immediately, so I was back in business. Sometime later I left, then came back later, found it wouldn’t work again, and no amount of coaxing can get the lights back on. I mean, as I said on twitter, it’s like burnt toast (fairly useless.)

Somewhere in this house I have a Bluetooth Keyboard and Huge Bluetooth Mouse, if I could only find them … see, that’s #6: Wireless devices can be really easy to lose when not using them regularly. Pain in the wallet.