Mighty Mouse is Mighty Crappy
I usually try to post tutorials on this blog to help users figure out how to do things on their new macbook, it’s also mostly for my own benefit because I look back 6 months later and wonder “how did I do that?”. Today I will be posting a product review (angry rant) about the $70 Mighty Mouse from Apple which people shouldn’t even waste time on even if it was given to them for free.
First off, what is the Mighty Mouse? it’s a wireless mouse by Apple that looks cool and works great when you first start off. Here’s a description off of Apple’s own product page:
“How do you improve on the mouse that has everything? Remove its tail. Mighty Mouse — the mouse that changed the way you scroll — has gone wireless. Now you can take that seamless, touch-sensitive, 360-degree scrolling design with you wherever you go.“
I was given one at work left over from another colleague who switched jobs. Setting the mouse up was pretty easy and straightforward. The mouse worked great. The wireless feature is amazing because you don’t need to pull the wire as it gets stuck on something on the desk.
The pain started shortly after setting it up and using it for about a week. The mouse scroll just stopped working. First it wouldn’t scroll up, then it would’nt scroll at all. Since it’s a mouse ball as a scroll wheel, I knew this had to be issue with dirt. No problem, I remember the old days when there were no lasers for mice and the ball would collect dirt and get stuck. I’ll just open up the hood and clean the scroll ball… how do you open up the hood to this thing? The bottom door just leads to the battery. Maybe I need to take the batteries out. Nope nothing there. I’ll look online. wow, there’s actually no easy way to open up and clean the scroll ball.
This problem isn’t just something that happened to me. I went around the office and found out the same issue with a wired mouse that comes with the iMac. I also found other who had the same problem that comes and goes every now and then. A google search turned up many results for this issue, here’s one of them from http://www.tinyscreenfuls.com:
“The fix? Blow compressed air around the scroll ball, or just push on it really hard and roll it around (that worked for me). If you’re lucky (I was), it will start working again.”
“If you’re lucky”? is this what we’ve come down to? luck of the draw to fix a hardware issue? Apparently I’m not lucky this time. That solution has worked in the past but now it has been two days and nothing seems to work. I will have to just open up this mouse and hope it’ll be as good as new when I put it back together. If it doesn’t, I don’t really care anymore because I’m going to dump this $70 dollar mouse and get a cheap $5 one that will probably work without causing this many problems.
Tags: apple, Mighty Mouse, mouse, Problems, product review, Scroll, Scrollwheel, won't scroll
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:24 pm
I have had the same experience with Mighty Mouse. I purchased mine using an Apple gift card and I wish I had saved it for something better because it was a complete waste of money. The battery life is phenominal, but the scrolling ball issue was enough to drive me mad.
I also have the wired Mighty Mouse at my office and I had to put it in the spare mice storage because the ball stopped scrolling down. A solution which worked for a few days was to turn it upside down and rub it furiously in circles and lines along jeans or another coarse fabric, but this would have to be repeated every couple of days until IT stopped working outright.
Thanks for giving my frustration with this grade-D product an outlet.
February 21st, 2009 at 3:41 am
Alexander, you are right. Once the problem starts happening, rolling the mouse around fixes it temporarily. It takes some time before it starts again, when you do the trick the fix lasts a little less. Finally it just gives out.