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  • Thread starter Thread starter Breck Fontaine
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Breck Fontaine

Hello,

I was just wondering if someone had an answer to this. I bought a
Labtec optical/wireless mouse (M/N:M-RAD92). My question is about the
battery life of the two AAA batteries inside the mouse. It seems that
I cannot turn the mouse off when not in use. The red optical light is
always on. Is this normal for all wireless/optical mice? Any help
would be appreciated. I contacted Labtec but no reply back. I also
checked their faqs but no information there either.

Thanks!
 
Breck said:
Hello,

I was just wondering if someone had an answer to this. I bought a
Labtec optical/wireless mouse (M/N:M-RAD92). My question is about the
battery life of the two AAA batteries inside the mouse. It seems that
I cannot turn the mouse off when not in use. The red optical light is
always on. Is this normal for all wireless/optical mice? Any help
would be appreciated. I contacted Labtec but no reply back. I also
checked their faqs but no information there either.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

The red light needs to be on because this is the only way the mouse can
detect movement. It would be unpractical to have an on/off switch because
you would forget it's off each time you try to use it.

I agree that when the computer is turned off it "should" power down the LED
but the problem is that the mouse only has one way communication to the
computer so it can't tell if the machine is on or not.

In short this is common behaviour for wireless optical mice, use
rechargables (most wireless optical mice came with them I thought) and you
should see weeks between charges (the LED is bright but dims slightly when
the mouse isn't being used and doesn't actually draw that much power).

If it makes you feel better then wireless mechanical mice had/have the same
problem, internally there are two (much smaller) LED's on the optical
encoder wheels. My old logitec mechanical wireless mouse ran for many
months on a single set of batteries
 
Hello,

I was just wondering if someone had an answer to this. I bought a
Labtec optical/wireless mouse (M/N:M-RAD92). My question is about the
battery life of the two AAA batteries inside the mouse. It seems that
I cannot turn the mouse off when not in use. The red optical light is
always on. Is this normal for all wireless/optical mice? Any help
would be appreciated. I contacted Labtec but no reply back. I also
checked their faqs but no information there either.

Thanks!
Click to expand...


Even if it drops down to a lower powered mode it still must
have the light to detect when you're moving it to come back
out of the lower power state. They are cheap devices, no
receiver in mouse so it won't "konw" if system is turned
off or (whatever), it has to be ready 24/7. It is normal
that the polling interval (to determine if it should come
out of sleep state) might vary. IIRC Microsoft's goes to
sleep faster than Logitech's but I might have it backwards
and have no idea where Labtec fits in, or if t even has a
sleep state at all instead of full-powered all the time.

Cordless optical mice eat batteries, fast enough that some
have moved to AA instead of AAA batteries, which are roughly
2.5-3X the capacity and still you might not get 50 days out
of a pair, but with AAA I'd expect a month isn't even
possible unless you accept poor function as it runs
batteries down to nothing, below voltages normally
considered drained. You could get 2 pair of rechargeable
AAA.
 
As always thanks for your advice.



Even if it drops down to a lower powered mode it still must
have the light to detect when you're moving it to come back
out of the lower power state. They are cheap devices, no
receiver in mouse so it won't "konw" if system is turned
off or (whatever), it has to be ready 24/7. It is normal
that the polling interval (to determine if it should come
out of sleep state) might vary. IIRC Microsoft's goes to
sleep faster than Logitech's but I might have it backwards
and have no idea where Labtec fits in, or if t even has a
sleep state at all instead of full-powered all the time.

Cordless optical mice eat batteries, fast enough that some
have moved to AA instead of AAA batteries, which are roughly
2.5-3X the capacity and still you might not get 50 days out
of a pair, but with AAA I'd expect a month isn't even
possible unless you accept poor function as it runs
batteries down to nothing, below voltages normally
considered drained. You could get 2 pair of rechargeable
AAA.
Click to expand...
 
Cordless optical mice eat batteries, fast enough that some
have moved to AA instead of AAA batteries, which are roughly
2.5-3X the capacity and still you might not get 50 days out
of a pair, but with AAA I'd expect a month isn't even
possible unless you accept poor function as it runs
batteries down to nothing, below voltages normally
considered drained. You could get 2 pair of rechargeable
AAA.
Click to expand...

With my Wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0, I get 5-6 months of heavy, daily
use on AA. The wireless mouse I had prior ( also a WIE ) only got about 1.5
months out of AA.

YMMV.
 
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