Mighty Mouse Special Report: Problems tracking on some surfaces

CNET staff

Sept. 2, 2009 8:09 a.m. PT

3 min read

The Mighty Mouse has issues tracking various surfaces -- including wooden desks, textured or light-colored mousepads, and more.

Mark Bolick writes:

"I just tried to use our new Mighty Mouse today on my work computer that sits on a pressboard wood desk with fake wood laminate on top. The Mighty Mouse jumps all over the place and has forced me to return to my MS Intellimouse (an excellent mouse in itself). Too bad. "

Another reader writes:

"I have the same experience -- I have been forced to lay a small stack (3 or 4 sheets) of paper between the desktop and the mouse."

Alan Forkosh compares the behavior of the Mighty Mouse to another optical input device from Kensington:

"I've been using a Mighty Mouse on a circular Apple promotional mouse surface with a grayish Apple symbol on an off-white background. The cursor occasionally jumps to the bottom of the screen, I assume when I cross between the dark and light portions of the pad. It's not doing it as much now as when I first got the mouse, so maybe it was due to some internal glitches. I previously was using a Kensington Optical Elite Mouse on the same surface with no problem."

Meanwhile, Mark describes issues on a formica surface:

"The mouse does not work on a formica countertop. I had to go back to a mouse pad. The rep at the Comp USA store in Tulsa was more than happy to give me a couple when I told him of the problem. I am happy with the scrolling and can live with the mouse pad, at least for now."

So far the best bet for tracking seems to be a solid, dark colored surface.

Gary Benner writes:

"I just purchased a Mighty Mouse and am having instances where it will unexpectedly jump to a different part of the screen. I am using a textured mouse pad with no design ( it is dark blue with white "smoke" trails). Sometimes it does it as I begin to move the cursor, other times while it is sitting idle."

Claudio Lizzola adds:

"This new mouse doesn't work on white paper (either written on or not) as my MacMice or other previous optical Apple mice do."

Meanwhile, readers note similar issues with other optical mice:

Matthew Cole writes:

"My Bluetooth Apple mouse also doesn't work on a wood surface or a white one. I need to use a densely patterned mouse pad to get it to work.

"I have always had trouble with my apple optical mice on wood. they have all (three) shown the jumping and erratic movement on my wood desk.

Joe Mahoney adds: "I don't have a Mighty Mouse, but have had issues with an otherwise very nice Kensington that is pretty much unusable on a wood table, but the standard Apple Pro mouse works fine. We have a Dell at work that we have to use on a black lacquered table and the mouse there is unusable unless we slide a piece of paper under it or a trackpad."

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