Katav's original message: I once again am fighting the mouse -- I go left & it does not; I go 2mm up and it races to the edge of the page. It seems to make no difference what company makes the mouse, none have a high survival rate on my desk.

I use it on a pad. I use it on bare "wood." It's undersized ball (part of the problem with the current rodent) is regularly removed and (along with its receptacle) cleaned.

I am asking for pointer (vs. pointed?) suggestions -- does anyone recommend a brand for use on all (most?) Windows platforms? Any comments about pens and pads (I'm drawn in that direction)? I tried - and quickly rejected - a trackball ... I always under/overshot the target.

Simon North (north@Synopsys.COM): I've been using a Logitech (green ball) trackball for a couple of years and have learned to love it. The great thing is that the left button is literally under your thumb For the past three months, however, I have been using a Wacom PenPartner ($199 from Frys). Wonderful! So great I now have 2, one for the kids at home and one here at work (I paid for them both out of my own pocket), which I then move around when I'm on the road with my notebook. Runs under Windows 95 and NT, and you can even leave your current pointer/mouse connected (there's no conflict). The only reservation is that you *do* need a serial port as well.

Malcolm Barnett (mbarnett@netvision.net.il): I am still using an Olivetti three-button mouse that I acquired with my (then) red-hot Olivetti 386 running at a mind-numbing 16 Mhz (on a good day, downhill with the wind behind it). This mouse (model number M-SB9-6MD) only requires occasional cleaning with a cotton-wool bud dipped in carbon tetrachloride. I have now probably jinxed it, after about nine years of outstanding service.

David Castro (techwrtr@crl.com): I absolutely love my Cirque EasyCat. They're cheaper than regular mice ($25), and work even in limited-space environments (you don't need to move it around, you just move your finger across the pad). I use one both at home and at work. I even use my left hand on the one at work, and my right hand on the one at home (to help avoid RSIs).

Geoff Trousselot (wordfactory@trump.net.au): I use a Intelli mouse which has the track ball. This means there is less movement of the mouse as you use the track ball to scroll. If you adjust the cursor movement, you only have to move the mouse a little to move the cursor a long way.

I noticed that it is not good to over clean your mouse because there usually is a bit of traction on the rollers that can be easily wiped off.

A hard surface mouse pad is the best, I've found.

It is a good idea to clean your mouse pad more than your mouse. It stops the mouse from needing to be cleaned.

Also don't press down on the mouse. let it glide over the mouse pad. I just hold the sides very gently with my fingers.

Usually desktop surfaces work ok but I remember I used a bit of paper that

I sticky taped to the desk when I couldn't get my hands on a good mouse pad. My office only had those soft material types that just got greasy and slippery real quick. Another suggestion for a makeshift mouse pad is to go to an old book store, (the cheap variety) and purchase one of those books selling for a couple of dollars with the material on cardboard cover. Rip off the cover and firmly fasten it to your desktop. The larger the book the better.

Buck and Tilly Buchanan (writer@ntws.net): The most common cause of such mouse behavior is a dirty mousepad. Just slapping the pad against the side of the desk when it misbehaves might fix the problem. Looking inside the bottom with a light might also reveal foreign material on the axle of the rollers. I often remove the mouse cover and clean the inside -- just cleaning what you can see through the ball hole just won't do it.

You could totally avoid the problem by getting one of those that uses a pad with a tiny grid. Optical sensors in the mouse take the place of a rolling ball.

Lisa Comeau (COMEAUL@csa.ca): Has anyone checked the ports on your computer? Have you moved to position of the mouse? When you install the mouse, do you install the drivers from disk or do you let Win95 handle it? Do you have a window directly beside your desk? (I know they sound like silly questions, but mice are strange creatures, and the smallest thing can set them off...)

Joost van der Sluijs (Joost_van_der_Sluijs@informaat.nl):....incredibly underestimating you: Have you adjusted the 'rodent' properties at:

Start - Settings - Control Panel - Mouse - Mouse properties?

Fred Ridder (F.Ridder@Dialogic.com): On my personal Macintosh I use a Kensington trackball, but on my company PC I use and swear by a Logitech 3-button mouse. I find it's ergonomics to be *vastly* superior to the bulbous blob from the people in Redmond (I was developing RSI from the MS mouse, which disappeared within weeks of changing to the Logitech). And the programmability of the buttons is really a treat. Most of the time I have the middle button programmed to be a double-click (it is SO nice not to have to worry about the tempo of double-clicking, and this is also real useful for word-level editing in Word), but when I'm doing heavy formatting stuff I can change it to be F4 (that wonderful "do-it-again" button)and when I'm updating fields I can set the middle button to be F11 (find next field)

Elna Tymes (etymes@lts.com): When you 'cleaned' the innards of your mouse, did you scrape off the accumulated gunk on the metal rollers themselves? In my experience, when a good mouse goes bad, it's usually because of gunk buildup. The mechanics are simple: the ball rolls along the surface, sometimes picking up whatever dust or cracker crumbs or paper lint that happens to be there. As it goes past the rollers (which is where the mouse actually gets the directions as to where it has moved), sometimes this stuff gets transferred to the roller itself. And because in your using a small amount of pressure as you move the mouse around, this gunk gets a bit compressed on those rollers.

I periodically clean mine by taking out the ball and scraping the rollers gently with an Xacto knife or some other sharp object. And I know it's time to clean when the mouse starts behaving erratically, as you describe.

Jason Willebeek-LeMair (jlemair@itexchsrv2.phx.mcd.mot.com): I used one of those touchpads for a while, it was not too bad. What about a joystick-type replacement?

Guy McDonald (guy@nwlink.com): Genius Netmouse is a nice alternative to the MS product (and easier on the pocketbook.) I own both and have less heartburn throwing the Genius product in the trash when it fails than the overpriced (IMO) Microsoft mouse.

Plus, once you use the middle scroll down button on the Netmouse, it becomes addictive!

Jim McAward (jimmc@chyron.com): Not being particularly fond of Microsoft products, I must make one exception: their mouse is really nice. I've found them to be durable, easy to clean, and they have a certain gravity that makes fine detail work easier.

Just my US$0.02. Or was that $US0.02? Or, perhaps $0.02 US?? ;-)

Michael Johnson (michaelj@oecmed.com): Something tells me you're running a serial mouse, probably Microsoft, under Windoze 95. One stunt that worked for me is to shut off the Windows 95 auto indexing, which helps the Fast Find utility run a little faster (but not much). Go to Start>Settings>Control Panel. Double click Fast Find. Then do Index>delete. Just to make sure you've done some real damage, set the Update Interval to something reasonable. I've got mine at 999 hours (the max possible). That means that if I haven't been successful shutting off auto indexing (you can never be sure about anything in Windows 95), it will happen only once every 999 hours (maybe).

Thanks to Geoff Hart for this idea. He got it from Woody Leonard, I believe.

Doug S Bailey (dsbailey@ingr.com): I use a Touche' (Synaptics) Touchpad. You move the cursor by moving your fingertip over the touchpad. It's really marvelous, and the Touche' model features Extended Edge, where, if your hold your finger still when it reaches the edge of the touchpad, the cursor will continue on in the direction it had been moving, as if the touchpad was larger than it is.

They're really inexpensive, too....you can find them for under $20 (American).

Mike and Norma (samsin@netvision.net.il): Logitech mouseman+ try and kill that.

Martha J Davidson (editrix@slip.net): Not being particularly fond of Microsoft products, I must make one exception: their mouse is really nice. I've found them to be durable, easy to clean, and they have a certain gravity that makes fine detail work easier.

I found that Kensington makes a good symmetric mouse, and until I moved to

NT it served me well. Unfortunately, NT doesn't support the 4-button programmable Thinking Mouse that I liked so much.

In the end I bought a Wacom PenPartner http://www.wacom.com/ with 4*5 inch pad on sale (close out?) for $85 (including local sales tax). While I would like more buttons on the stylus, everyone here loves the thing ... as long as it doesn't get buried under "stuff." (It does have a pen holder, but I have 3 kids -- 20, 16, and 12, so ...)

Thanks to all who responded (and to Yohanon Emek for providing space for this>.