A Better Mouse-Fix the Left Button!

fizbin asks: "Every mouse I've ever had a chance to use for a long enough period of time (from cheap 5-dollar two-button specials to brand-name Logitech three-button things to those Sun optical ones that need the special metal mousepad) has developed the same problem: the first button (and I guess others as well, but I notice this on the first button) begins to slowly stop working. It lets up even if I keep my finger down. This makes it a royal pita to drag anything from one place to another (since what you're dragging gets "dropped" when the first button lets up), and makes using certain menus (such as the ctrl-button menus on xterms) almost impossible (since I can never keep the button held down long enough to drag down to the item I want). Is this expected behavior, and should I simply plan on replacing my mouse every six months? What about common computers (in labs, etc.) -- should they budget for replacement mice on a regular schedule? Is there some brand of mouse that avoids this problem?"

Comments

From a Sun Microsystems bug report (#4102680):

[Wakko Warner]

"Workaround: don't pound on the mouse like a wild monkey."

- A.P.
--

"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

Fingerpounding

[toh]

There's one other thing I've noticed about mouse and keyboard use that might bear mentioning. Any physical device but the most tank-like will wear out more quickly if you use it harder, and most people click and hold buttons and hit keys much harder than they need to. One reason my old ADB mouse lasted so long was probably the fact that I almost obsessively try to use a light touch wherever possible. The nicest thing about doing this is that you'll also be preserving the other, more important parts of the mechanical input system - your fingers and wrists. If your mice wear out consistently more often than other people's, you might want to ask someone to watch you compute and see whether you're unintentionally being a little harder on yourself and your equipment than you need to be.

Manufacturing quality and cost still makes a difference, though; the last University lab I administered had 10 (pre-USB) Macs and 10 PCs, and it was only the PC mice (M$) that had problems. The Macs were more heavily used, too (I'll leave aside questions of whether GUI design inconsistency and unreliability increases people's stress and causes people to press more anxiously on the Wintel mice, though it probably does). In fact they were constantly used, twelve hours a day. And there's the obvious corollary that a higher quality button will probably respond more consistently in the first place, making it less likely to create hard-clickin' habits.

Anyway, that's enough out of me for this thread. Wonder why this subject wasn't deemed interesting enough for the main page?