I just bought a Macally mMouseBT . . . my first Bluetooth mouse. Very often I’m getting erratic behavior from it, like sticking or skipping. Sometimes the cursor jumps across the screen like an insect . . . when I’m not even touching the mouse.
Any suggestions?
If it matters, I’m on a G5 Mac, OS 10.4.11
I hope a solution is around the corner for you. I gave up on cordless mice long ago. It’s hard to produce a lag in the cursor of corded hardware and oh so easy with cordless. My cordless is in s junk pile in the bedroom.
I’m about to toss my HP Wireless Optical Comfort Mouse in the trash bin and get a corded mouse instead. The screen “flips” up and down at an extremely fast rate every time I so much as rest a finger next to the scroll wheel, when it works at all. I’ve inadvertently clicked on more than one advertisement I didn’t intend to due to this. Repeated resets of the thing make not one whit of difference, and there’s no driver available for it that I can find.
I’ve found the Logitech M505 cordless to be quite a reliable mouse and not prone to interference. I’ve got XL hands, but the compact size of the mouse suits me very nicely.
I use the Logitech MX revolution mouse, which is cordless but not Bluetooth. I works great. I’ve used it on a G5 and an intel Mac.
Put me in the camp that went back to corded mice. I tried umpteen different cordless and they all behaved poorly.
I’ve had cordless in the past, with no problems. And I’ve had Macally before, also with no problems. But this is the first one that’s Bluetooth.
I’ll second this. There was a thread asking for advice about cordless mice last year, so I tested mine, and it was able to control the cursor from about 25 feet, with the microwave oven running. You can often find them for $15 on sale. We’ve got four in our house now, without interference.
(I was wrong what I said in post 5 in that thread about the M305 being replaced. The 310 or 315 is just a different model, maybe just a different shell.)
I found a Kensington track ball under my tree. May never go back to a mouse. I have gone into system and changed a few settings. I changed the ‘‘Acceleration profile’’ form 0 to -300 and minimum pixels from 4 to 2. That made it much less twitchy on small adjustments but still allows rapidly jumping to the far corner of the screen. I do miss the scroll wheel on my 5 button Belkin optical mouse. The track ball is wired, USB/PS2. Since you don’t move the track ball, the cable is little bother. It is a little like keeping your left foot still when you go from a stick to an automatic.
I would assume your Mac allows tweaking peripherals. I don’t think my Power mac with OS 7.6.1 does. Or does Apple think it is perfect out of the box?
Never been a fan because of the lag problem you mentioned but also because it’s just another battery powered device I have to deal with. And the fact that’s it no longer tethered to my computer makes it just easier to misplace. Never understood the attraction. Sorry that this little rant isn’t much help to the OP.
Does this unit have a USB Bluetooth receiver plugged into the system, or is Bluetooth integrated in the system itself? If you are using a USB Bluetooth receiver, try getting a USB extension cord and relocating the receiver away from the system.
My home theatre system ( a Dell Optiplex 960) suffered from “drunk mouse” behavior until I moved the Bluetooth receiver away from the system, as described in my blog.
I am using a Logitech cordless mouse that I must have bought over seven years ago. I notice no lag or other funny business. It has a dock to recharge it so as long as I put it back it is always charged. Getting pretty long in the tooth, but I would never go back to a corded mouse.
Second that with minor exceptions.
I default to a corded mouse when I have forgotten to return the mouse to the recharging holster for a couple of days and I lately have begun to suspect that it needs fresh batteries anyway.
It seems to ‘drop out’ while traversing pages in Arora recently but I suspect a problem with the Arora installation rather than the mouse.
As I gave my corded mouse away a few days ago I can’t verify this until the new one is delivered.
Back a few years ago when cordless mice were becoming popular, I got a new computer and decided to try one of these little beasties. It behaved OK, but only lived about three weeks before dying. Went back to Best Buy - they gave me a replacement, and this time it lived about 3 and one-half weeks before expiring. Went back to B.B, and they gave me a third cordless mousie. It only lasted two weeks before dying a sad and tragic death.
All my mouses (mice?) have been corded since then. They seem to last forever.
Put me in the corded mouse corner, too. Not only do I use a corded Microsoft mouse with my mac, but a Logitech keyboard, too - I think my husband barely tolerates the arrangement, but I like them better than Mac’s proprietary stuff.
I think it’s the Bluetooth. I had a Bluetooth keyboard that went in the trash a few years ago. Same problem, it had perceptible lag compared to a conventional wireless keyboard.
I’ll also recommend any of the Logitech MX models. The new ones use their unifying receiver that reduces interference. My fiance and I use 2 side by side without any problems. They’re also the only mice I’ve found that work on my microfiber couch without a mouse pad.
My new computer came with a cordless mouse and keyboard. When I typed an “A” sometimes I’d get “AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaa”. So after a little of that, I bought a corded mouse and keyboard set and tossed the cordless keyboard in a drawer. I’ve stuck with the cordless mouse even though it occasionally lags and requires me to push a ‘Connect’ button on its bottom. In terms of my handling, I don’t really notice much of a difference between the corded and cordless mouse, maybe a little more freedom, but mostly insignificant.
What I’d really like to know is; WHY a cordless keyboard in the first place? Mine never moves from its position in front of the monitor. Do people really need to move their keyboards around so much that a cord is an inconvenience?
I don’t understand why anybody considers a cordless keyboard a particular advantage, either. Cordless mice, though, ARE an advantage in not having to drag the damned cord all over the desktop. Then again, I’m far more particular about pointing devices than keyboards. At one time I had a truly ancient keyboard which had been plugged into several systems harking back to, IIRC, a 386 box from the mid 80s. I finally got a new one, partially because the old one was so filthy I was surprised it hadn’t evolved new lifeforms crawling out of it - that’s two keyboards for well over two decades. In that time I’ve tried God knows how many various mice, trackballs, gyro thingies, etc.
I’ve never had much trouble with cordless mice failing to track (given reasonable placement of the base / usb plugin), but the early ones ate batteries at an alarming rate (with some models it made it worse to leave them sitting on a dark mouse pad because they adjusted the brightness of their lasers to compensate). Eventually, Logitech wised up and gave them rechargeable lithium batteries, with a recharger cradle to set the mouse in. These days, they seem to have gone away from that again, claiming that regular batteries will last for several months in them. Eh. I liked the Logitech MX revolution mice, too, except I’ve busted a couple - the microswitches wear out. I currently have one lying around that I’ve been meaning to experiment with fixing the microswitch as per various directions you can find. It would probably help if I didn’t have a habit of frobbing with the mouse when I’m just reading, idly moving the cursor around and clicking on inactive areas or highlighting text for no good reason.
I found rechargeable to be a pain because I would need to charge them more often as the batteries wore out and it wasn’t possible to replace them. My current mouse (logitech mx620) lasts for nearly a year between battery replacements.
It did give me a good place to put the mouse so I wouldn’t lose it though.