The PC primer: Hardware: Mice

Mice and other Pointers

The Mouse

Here we see the two of the three current 'flavours' of mouse available, the white 'Ball' mouse and the IR mouse. The latter has many advantages over the 'Ball' mouse, which is prone to pick up dirt and transfer it to the sensors making them difficult to move and of course affecting the cursor movement. The IR mouse has no moving parts so apart from the occasional wipe over hardly ever gives problems.

Mice have been connected to the PC in a number of ways and here we see all three. The white connector is the old 'serial' connector, rarely seen now. It plugged into one of the 'COM' ports and has been around since the days of the 286 Processor and the first version of Windows, although Apple Macintosh users will (correctly) say that its history with them is older.
The next type was the 'PS2' type, not shown seperately here, but an adaptor (green) allowing the current favorite, the black 'USB' connector into a PS2 port.
The USB mouse will of course plug into any USB port, hub, or into the back of the USB keyboards now appearing.

Graphics Tablets

Graphics Tablets are a great idea if you do an amount of drawing. The pen moves over the sutface and whatever you draw is replicated on the screen.
They are also recommended if you have a problem such as RSI.

Trackerballs

Basically an upside down mouse, I've had one an found it a little difficult to get on with, has I feel a number of disadvantages over the mouse, as 'stuff' from your hands gets onto the ball rollers, making them less sensetive. You will also need to clean them out more often than a mouse.

Cleaning the mouse

The ball mouse picks up a lot of dirt on its travels across your desk. The ball has a rubber coating and muck sticking to it will be transferred to the rollers, the rollers feed information to the mouse's electronics.
The dirt builds up in a coil around the middle of the roller and can easily be removed by scraping it off with something like a paperclip.

Dirt on the sensor rollers (I've seen much worse)

You shouldn't forget to clean the pressure roller, as this forces the ball onto the sensor rollers.