Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse

 

 

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I've owned 2 of these Wireless Mighty Mouse for a while. I've bought the 1st one in Sep 2006 together with my MacBook and the 2nd in 2007. I learnt to take care the hard way. This is because I bought the 2nd unit thinking I won't be able fix the rolling ball. I eventually fixed it and since then I have an extra moue. At least now I don't have to carry the mouse with me when I take the laptop with me to the Fac. This is what I learnt from this bad experience: to get a consistent cleaning you'd better wet a paper towel or similar in alcohol and then slide the mouse against the wet towel upside down while spinning the ball. Spinning the ball vigorously against a dry towel can temporally unstuck it but it won't last whereas with alcohol it will work smoothly for weeks or even months.

On regard of the battery life, this mouse can fit 2 large capacity AA batteries, what I really appreciate (I hope AAA type would left aside in any portable device since they run out much sooner and AAA rechargeable batteries usually range from as expensive to far more expensive). Even so I my impression is that this mouse runs out of charge in just a few days, I would say it uses up a couple of batteries in no more than 50 hours of activity. This is a good reason to use rechargeable batteries as I've always done. I moved to rather expensive 4000mAh rechargeable batteries but I didn't notice a big improvement. Therefore my advise is to stick with cheap low-end ones and buy a few more spare batteries for replacement. It could also be that my battery charger doesn't fully recharge the batteries, I should check that but it would mean purchasing another charger. Even so, unlike the 2500mAh, I can use the 4000mAh with my cheap Coolpix digital camera for long, so my guess is that the charger is filling the 4000mAh batteries. Even with the 4000mAh the Mighty Mouse runs out of charge rather soon.

I'd like to comment two additional issues: unlike many other optical mice in the market the laser of this mouse is too sensitive to the surface becoming very, very imprecise. You will probably require a good hard mousepad. A cheap one doesn't help much. Paper sheets don't work either. If you finally find an adequate surface the pointer will move with precision and smoothly along the screen. This handicap can make the Mighty Mouse not a very good option to travel with unless you are wiling to carry your mousepad with you. By the way, I've found that on plastic placemats sold as Disneyland souvenirs the mouse performs also quite well, while being much larger than the regular mouse pads.

The 2nd issue isn't directly related with the mouse but with the Mac OS X. Tracking at maximum speed is still slow in Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard. It needs a lot of movement of the hand what means you can easily surpass the limits of a small-sized mousepad, what as I said above in my opinion is almost a need for this model. In contrast, I don't have this problem working with Windows XP. The mouse tracks quite fast and is still precise. Most times I have my laptop attached to a 1920x1200p display what is probably worsening the problem. Even so, working with Win XP with the same computer and display gives much better results. I think Apple should widen the tracking speed range in the future, although at this point I'm pessimistic since in the last three years has done nothing to improve that feature.

I think this mouse shouldn't deserve more than 3 stars. I give an additional one since it is the only mouse I know with an omnidirectional wheel (aka the rolling wheel). Unfortunately, this feature doesn't work with Windows. I'd like that Apple should have include at least within the Boot Camp drivers the side motion for the ball since with many Windows mice you can get side motion once their drivers are set up.

Sorry for my lack of style in my English. I'm a foreigner living in a non-English speaking country which takes little care for their children education and skill in state and high schools. I started studying English in my 20s, I bet you can guess right which country is. Even so, I thought I could manage to share my previous experience with some newcomer user.

The mouse is great. The buttons can all be selected to do different things. I can click the scroll wheel and Expose will be activated. I use the side buttons for Dashboard. Very convenient.

Now the annoying problem: it becomes dirty quick and the scroll ball soon becomes unusable. This is easily remedied however. For all people with the scroll ball issues all it takes is vigourous cleaning. Put a bit of whatever cleaning product you use for your Keyboard and simply scrub over the ball so it. Push into it and spin it round. After you have finished it should then work again.

If it wasn't for this I'd give it 5 stars. Hoping Apple will bring the multitouch to the mouse. Or at the very least update to a new version so that we don't have this annoying problem. White is just a terrible choice for something so frequently handled.

Apple need to work on the design of this mouse. I have 3 main problems with it, smallest first.

1- Top-trackball issues. Mine gummed up eventually just like everyone else's. The turn-it-upside-down-and-roll-it-around-on-something-clean advice does work, but only temporarily. This is an annoyance, but only a small one.

2- left-and-right button detection. I'm reasonably forgiving to ergonomic difficulties, but I could seldom make the right-button work. Stopping to poise a finger above the extreme right-hand-edge wasn't working for me, so I got back into ctrl-clicking (Well, I remapped to the trackball-button, really, but you get the idea. A button wasn't working.) Renders the two-button-detection a bit pointless.

3- (And this is important). Eventually you are going to knock a wireless mouse off your desk. This isn't the mouse to do that with. It has a jury-rigged bit of switchgear on the bottom of the mouse that depends on the minute actuation of a bit of bent metal to switch the mouse on and off. When your mouse falls and the battery cover goes spinning off under a bit of heavy furniture, not only have you got to recover said battery cover, but the tiny bit of metal is now bent out of shape and no longer functions properly. The mouse no longer switches on, and my efforts to bend it back into shape only succeeded in voiding my warranty. Occasionally I can get it to switch on for a while, but never for long.

Logitech briefly won my custom by including that marvellous bit of 21st century gadgetry, a proper switch, at the bottom of their bluetooth mouse. But the problems the Logitech mouse has with connecting at login aren't trivial, and I'm not convinced it hasn't been implicated in some crashes that stopped happening when I stopped using it, (the Logitech mouse). So I can't really recommend that one either.

I'm generally a fan of Apple's products, but if you are upgrading from a regular mouse, make sure they've got these flaws fixed, otherwise head somewhere else.

Please, Apple, put a proper on/off switch in the next design.

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› See all 25 customer reviews on Amazon.co.uk

 

5.0 out of 5 stars Lovely
Nice size, neat shape. Never had any problems with my mouse. Battery life is very good - I haven't changed them since I got it 8 months ago and I use the mouse a fair bit (not... Read more

Published 9 months ago by Rosie

5.0 out of 5 stars Apple Mighty Mouse
The Apple Mouse was in excellent condition and arrived quickly after the order was placed. Marked as lightly used but it was "as new". Highly recommended.

Published 11 months ago by Wadd795

1.0 out of 5 stars disaster
straight to the point
I bought a mighty mouse which side buttons were not working. I have asked to the seller to take this point into consideration and have a new mouse back... Read more

Published 16 months ago by Lusito

3.0 out of 5 stars Apple mighty mouse
the mouse came dirty and far from "Like New" as I was told although after a clean it was not to bad apart from some marks and at least it worked!

Published 23 months ago by Mr. David R. W. Cullen

4.0 out of 5 stars Still mighty
I finally converted my sister to a MacBook after languishing in PC hell for years. But the new whizzy mouse was a bit too scary (and pricey), but I still wanted to get her a mouse... Read more

Published on 28 Jan 2010 by Mr. Andrew Palmer

2.0 out of 5 stars Ok but not very smooth or accurate
So seeing as Apple decided to only put 2 usb ports on a macbook, I expected that the mighty mouse would eliminate the need to cut your USB port availability in half by offering a... Read more

Published on 1 Sep 2009 by M. Hadley

5.0 out of 5 stars It's a mouse - it works
Not much more to say. It has more features on it than I care to use. Not sure if that's a good thing or not. Read more

Published on 22 July 2009 by Mr. Andrew Baillie

5.0 out of 5 stars Mighty Mighty Mouse
I received my Mighty Mouse turned it on started my Mac and hey presto, an Excellent Multifunction, Gorgeous, Cool piece of Tehcnological Art. Read more

Published on 13 Jun 2009 by P. Churton

2.0 out of 5 stars Bizarre design fault
I replaced my wired MM after about a year when the much documented 'fluff on the scroll wheel' problem started happening every couple of hours. Read more

Published on 5 Jun 2009 by alfredo

3.0 out of 5 stars Save your money
Had this mouse for about two weeks and can honestly say it's no better than a conventional mouse.

Sometimes drops the signal while navigating a webpage for no reason,... Read more

Published on 24 April 2009 by Mr. N. Parkes

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