Naughty mouse won't do what its told!

April 23, 2009 8:20 AM

Is there a way to, um, calibrate this Logitech mouse?

I have this Logitech wireless mouse. I'm using a Macbook Pro with a second 24" Dell monitor.

Sometimes when I click to close a window on the second monitor, it minumizes it instead. Thing is... I know for a fact that I had the cursor on the close button. It's like sometimes, regardless of the cursors position, the actual location of my clicks are a few pixels off. What gives?

Another issue: Sometimes I have to click two and three times to get the click to actually register. But it's not like I'm not pressing down hard enough, or the mechanics of the mouse aren't firing, because when I click, I see the visual evedence of the click happening in the proper place each time. Like, when I click to close a tab in Firefox, I see the X change color and depress, but it sometimes won't actually close until I click it two or three times. Or sometimes I have to actually click the tab to make it on top, then click close, and it works.

Also: I'm 99% sure this is an issue with this mouse specifically, not a monitor/computer/OS/software issue, because clicking is 100% accurate when I use the trackpad. Or when I had a different mouse.

I've looked in my system preferences, under both the mouse settings and the Logitech Control Center, and can't find anything that would allow me to calibrate this mouse.

Is there anything I can do to make this mouse work properly, or should I just cut my losses and buy a different one?

posted by nitsuj to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Have you checked the batteries?
posted by wongcorgi at 8:44 AM on April 23

Yeah, sounds like either the batteries are dying or the wireless radio usb thingie is too far away from the mouse.
posted by I-baLL at 8:54 AM on April 23

The battery is 95% full, and the dongle is about 2 inches away from the mouse itself.
posted by nitsuj at 8:56 AM on April 23

I find that, with my Apple bluetooth mouse on my MacBook, character selection is off by about a half-character width and I frequently miss the left-most character. The thing is, it's not consistent, seeming to change with each pairing (or, perhaps... but I haven't really experimented... with the accuracy getting worse over the time elapsed since pairing... hmmm). For example, right now it is dead on but I paired only a few mins ago.

Try re-pairing a few times and see if it improves or even just changes the accuracy with each pairing. Not saying this will fix anything but it might tell you whether or not to give up on that mouse.

I have a corded Logitech that I adore on the MacBook.
posted by bz at 9:12 AM on April 23

bz: can you "re-pair" a wireless USB mouse? Do you mean just unplug it and plug it back in? To my knowledge, you don't pair wireless USB in the same way you do with Bluetooth.
posted by nitsuj at 9:16 AM on April 23

Oh... You know... I don't know. I doubt it. I missed the "USB" part. Can you try not using the USB transceiver and just using the MBP's radio?
posted by bz at 9:24 AM on April 23

(of course, now that I think about it, the USB wireless is probably not bluetooth. Just ignore me.)
posted by bz at 9:28 AM on April 23

Is your mouse software up to date and does the mouse work on a different computer.
posted by Submiqent at 9:56 AM on April 23

If the cursor is in one location, but a click selects another location, it's not a hardware issue.

The mouse tells the OS where to move the cursor, and the OS, not the mouse, is responsible for the movement of the cursor and how it behaves. It's not possible for the mouse to then send a click to a specific part of the screen (at least, not without the aid of software designed to do this). The mouse is ignorant of the PC - It has no way of knowing where the cursor is, what it's near, the screen resolution or anything of the sort.

I'd try removing the Logitech Control Center entirely, and if the mouse operates without it, try reproducing the issue. If it continues, try the mouse on another system.
posted by Rendus at 10:48 AM on April 23

If you installed the logitech software, bow your head and sigh. I'd uninstall that first as it is notoriously crappy. Beyond that... I dunno. It would have to be hardware. Is it possible the mouse shell is not seating correctly on the body or the electronics are not mounted correctly inside?
posted by chairface at 5:40 PM on April 23

I have the same problems, especially the one where I click on the 'close' button and the window minimizes instead. It's not every time, or even especially frequent, but it definitely happens. I'm using only the MB Pro trackpad, no mouse at all.

My vote's for a software issue, in the Mac OS itself.
posted by FlyingMonkey at 9:49 PM on May 7