Miss Perspicacia Tick said in news:
[email protected]:
I have an MX 900 which eats batteries like they're going out of
fashion! It will last a week on Duracell M3s and four days on 1800mAh
NMH rechargeables. Nowhere have I read that battery life was so
short! I like the mouse, but I keep forgetting to replace it in the
base station. MS claim that their new cordless and bluetooth mice
will last six months on a single set of batteries - has anyone had
one that long and can substantiate this? If it's true, then I might
just stick this on eBay and buy one. After the fiasco with the
Intellimouse Explorer I vowed never to purchase another MS mouse
again, but I'm willing to renege on that if it means I can get one
with a bit more life in it!
Thanks
I had the Logitech cordless wheel mouse (you have to open it to replace
the batteries; i.e., no charger stand). As a result, I bought 2 sets of
NiMH batteries. When the first set got low, I would swap in the already
charged set and put the dead set into a wall-pluggable charger so they
would be ready for the next needed swap.
I haven't had as short a usage period as you. With good quality
[disposable] alkalines, they lasted 17 to 24 days (I do lots of gaming).
With NiMH rechargeables, they lasted 14 to 18 days. This was nowhere
close to Logitech's claim that batteries would last 3 months. I have
also tried the IBM and Microsoft cordless mice. They do have longer
lifetimes for the batteries but at an expense that I was unwilling to
make.
The IBM and Microsoft cordless mice are lighter than the Logitech. My
pinkie was getting tired of squeezing the mouse to lift and move it
around since I compute all day and all evening (usually games). I
figured a lighter cordless mouse would less fatiguing on my pinkie.
Turns out the IBM and Microsoft cordless mice were far more jerky in
games. Even if I upped the sampling rate to its highest setting and
even after trying to increase the driver's buffer size, I could only
somewhat reduce the jerkiness. The Logitech never exhibited this
jerkiness. Also, if I whipped the mouse real fast across the pad, the
IBM and Microsoft would actually get confused and move the wrong way and
end up on the opposite side of the screen. This only occured for fast
horizontal movement and not for fast vertical movement. Again, the
Logitech never exhibited this defect.
The only remaining advantage of the IBM and Microsoft mice was longer
lifetimes for the batteries - but the price was a much shorter automatic
shutoff timer. Cordless mice will power down and leave the LED at a
minimal power to sense movement but they don't constantly sense for
movement. They will poll every so often to check if the mouse has been
moved between poll intervals. They go to sleep, raise an eyelid
slightly every so often to see if they have been moved, then go back to
sleep if they haven't been moved. This means you can actually be
whizzing the cordless mouse around for a second or longer before the
mouse comes back alive. The IBM and Microsoft don't really seem to wait
for an idle timeout before they go to sleep. I've had them go to sleep
within 20 to 30 seconds after their last movement. Even when editing a
document, I'd find the mouse was unresponsive for a second before the
mouse cursor would start moving on the screen. In a fast acting game,
this means death. Move, MOVE, MOOOVVVEEE!!! Too late, you're dead. A
half second or longer for the mouse to wake up (when it shouldn't have
even gone to sleep in the first place) is too long. Even in non-game
applications, the repeated pauses for the next wake-poll were irritating
when trying to mouse inside an application. If I kept the mouse moving
without pausing more than, say, 5 seconds between movements then the
mice would not go to sleep, but the idle timeout was very short and I
was always trying to shake awake a sleeping cordless mouse. Never had
this problem with the Logitech cordless mouse. I think it waits a
minumum of 1 minute (or maybe it was longer; been too long since I
measured) before going to sleep into the lower power mode. It also
polls at much shorter intervals so the delay after you start moving the
mouse before it starts moving the mouse cursor on the screen is much
shorter. The wakeup delay is shorter with the Logitech but it is still
barely perceptible.
Because the Logitech takes a lot longer before it decides to go to sleep
(i.e., its idle timer is for a longer interval) and because it polls at
much shorter intervals with a lot shorter wakeup delay, the Logitech
uses more power than the IBM and Microsoft mice. Thusly its batteries
don't last as long. But I would far prefer having to exhange between 2
sets of rechargeable NimH batteries about every 2 weeks rather than have
a mouse that I move and nothing happens onscreen for a second, or
longer, for the mouse cursor.
Eventually my pinkie has gotten too tired of constantly squeezing the
heavier cordless mice (because of the weight of the batteries) and I've
gone back to a tethered mouse. My complaint with tethered mice is the
resistance felt from the cord as you move it around, especially
vertically (to and fro instead of sideways) because of the drag of the
cord over the edge of the desk. So I arranged all my gear to leave a
wide open space directly ahead of the mouse (so the cord doesn't hit or
rub against anything) and used a self-stick wire clip on the wall to
hold portion of the cord so it would provide a free section or loop of
the cord instead of sliding over the desk edge. I also have no wakeup
delay (but I haven't noticed that it is any smoother in gameplay than
the cordless Logitech). I may even go back to a trackball but I don't
like the feel of any of them except the Kensington Expert Mouse, the one
with the big heavier snooker-size ball (makes for easy replacement) that
you could actually spin and with ball-bearing steel rollers (no rubber!)
felt best. It is pricey at $100 but it sure beats repeated fatigue of
your wrist and pinkie.
