Our MS Intellipoint 4.1 optic mouse is acting sluggish - even with new batteries. What is causing this? Has any SDopers experienced problems with theirs? Maybe your experiences can at least help me troubleshoot the problem? Please help! This is like our 100th PC-related failure in the past 8 weeks. I must be a jinx! 
- Jinx
Have you tried it on a different surface? Is the lens clean and the light bright?
Wikkit, the light is bright when held upside down to exam, and it also seems bright simply lifted and held above the surface. I use a mouse pad, although supposedly not necessary, but it stills seems more responsive when used on the mousepad. I can try another surface, but this was never a problem before now.
As for the lens, the box (packaging) boasts the mouse is maintenance-free. Stupid question, but where is the lens? I assume it is that red section at the leading-end of the mouse? If this is true, then what is the purpose of the red light on the bottom of the mouse?
Lastly, does the receiver have the ability to change frequencies? There’s a button above the green light on the receiver…not sure if it really serves any purpose. And, does the receiver have a lens, also, for receiving some signal?
Obviously, I’m not sure how the optic mouse hardware works…
Set me straight!
- Jinx
Flip the mouse over. See the red light? Just ahead of it will be the lens. It looks a lot like the lens on a CD player’s laser. Also, try NOT using a mouse pad. I use my desktop (one of those cheapo particle board desks with the woodgrain laminate surface) and don’t have any problems. I’m assuming yours is wireless. Be sure you have a clean line-of-sight with the receiver.
Textured surfaces are better than smooth.
Patterned surfaces are better than solid colour.
I may be fudging it a bit here, but as I have understood it the optical mouse knows where it is by tracking the difference in what is under its “eye”… My work desk last year was covered in a white patent cloth, it wouldn’t work on it. I taped a piece of white paper to the table, and then it worked, apparantly the texture of the paper was enough for it to be able to differentiate between shadow and light (or something). In other words, try some different surfaces, most of my problems with op-mice have been with that.
I’m guessing from your description that you’re using the Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer on a USB connection.
How exactly does the sluggishness exhibit itself? Does the pointer move, then stick for a moment, then carry on? Or is it a more generalised slowness of response?
If you go to the control panel and double-click on the Mouse option it should bring up the intellipoint software config applet. There should be a “Hardware” tab. If you click on the “Properties” button on this tab you should get another dialog with an “Advanced Settings” tab. This will allow you to configure the sample rate and the input buffer length (my defaults are 100 reports/second and 100 packets of buffer space).
Depending on the exact problem changing these values may help. I’d try increasing the buffer space a bit.
It may also be a problem to do with other software/hardware. I’ve seen occasional optical mouse problems like this when a scanner was installed on the USB bus; particularly modern scanners with buttons on the front that are constantly polled for input.
Failing all this I’d take a look at the communications between the mouse itself and its base station. Is it infra-red, radio or bluetooth wireless? If infra-red check that the line of sight is uninterrupted and that the lenses are clean. If bluetooth or radio I’d suspect some kind of interference from other devices. Have you moved anything like a TV or other device that may interfere with the tranmissions nearby recently?
I’ve generally found optical mice to work well on pretty much any surface. The white patent surface was probably both too smooth and undistinguished and reflective enough to “dazzle” the receiver with the return.
I hope some of this helps.