Best Laptop Accessories: Wireless Mouse

November 15, 2011, By 5 comments

Best Laptop Accessories: Wireless Mouse

If there is one thing I dislike about laptop computers, it's their little built-in mice. These tend to function well initially, but after a year or so they start to feel kind of "crunchy," one or more of their integral buttons starts to get wobbly and they begin to have problems with responsiveness. This is true for laptops used for normal, day-to-day functions like word processing, emailing and Web browsing, and it is exacerbated by activities like playing games, especially those that require repetitive or rapid clicks of the mouse. To say that such integrated mice constitute the weakest link on most laptops would not be an overstatement.

A couple of years ago, I was beginning to have problems with the built-in mouse on my HP Pavilion laptop computer, which had been subjected to intensive game play during its first year of use and was starting to get that "crunchy" effect. My father gave me a Logitech wireless mouse that he had just retired, and not only did it make working on my computer much easier, I am still using the device a little more than two years later. Meanwhile, the built-in mouse has become almost completely non-functional (and everything else on the three-year-old unit is rapidly following suit).

Most wireless mice consist of two components: the mouse itself—which usually runs on two AA batteries—and a receiver that typically plugs into a USB port. My old Logitech mouse has a transmitter considerably larger than those that come with newer models, and because it cannot be easily plugged into a USB port it has a three-foot cord between the plug and the transmitter (posing a minor but easily surmountable inconvenience and not one significant enough to make me want to replace it). The HP wireless mouse I recently picked up for use with my new HP Pavilion desktop—why have a cord attached to any mouse if you don't have to?—has a compact little receiver that's worked well so far.

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Comments (5):

Robert G. Mike, I prefer the corded mouse for gaming. Batteries dying are a horrible thing when you are in a large raid with 25-40 people involved. I learned over the years that the inconvinence of a cord, far outweighs wiping on a boss because the batteries died. While using a cordless mouse for word processing or other low-intensity would be alright, I went through at least 2 sets of batteries a month. I hooked a keylogger up to to my mouse once, and found that I was clicking, or moving the mouse upwards of 20,000 times in one gaming session. That sort of use wears down batteries very, very quickly. - 12/07/2011
Michael V. Krista, very glad you have been enjoying my articles and finding them useful! Comments like yours are more encouraging than you know. Yes, my Logitech wireless mouse has held up very nicely as well -- two-and-half years as of this writing, and that is since my father retired it and passed it on to me. And it does not seem as if I have needed to change the batteries in it more than once or twice a year. - 12/07/2011
Michael V. Robert, are you talking about preferring the built-in mouse that comes with a laptop or about plugging one in like you would do with a desktop computer? If you mean the former, didn't you find that the integral mouse got worn out prematurely as a result of such intensive usage? I definitely would prefer the inconvenience of a cord to that! As far as the batteries in a wireless mouse dying at inconvenient times, I rarely play games with mine so this has not been much of a problem -- although the times the batteries have died while I was word processing it was moderately annoying, so I can only imagine how much more this would have been the case if I had been in the middle of a game! - 12/07/2011
Krista J. My Logitech wireless mouse lasted for over 4 years with very little issues or problems, except for when it was time for new batteries. I have not had time to replace it and find the wired mouse cumbersome and restrictive. A friend recommended these articles and I'm glad! They are easy to read and informative on a variety of subjects, very cool! - 11/17/2011
Robert G. I have never had much luck with wireless mice. I played World of Warcraft as a high end raider for nearly five years, and there was always a delay, or the batteries would die at bad moments. I'd rather just have a wired mouse. - 11/15/2011

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