How to get my mouse to wake up faster?

January 7, 2008 7:49 PM

Macfilter: Why does my wired USB mouse take a second to start responding on my Macbook?

I'm familiar with the lag one receives when you start using a wireless mouse. My question is, why am I receiving the same thing with wired mice on my Core 2 Duo Macbook?

I'm running OSX 10.4.11, and have both a Logitech Wheel Mouse and my trusty old Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer. When I haven't touched my mouse in a short time, there's a noticeable delay of maybe a second or two before it start responding. After that, it's absolutely fine until you leave it alone for a short period of time. This never, ever, ever happens with the inbuilt trackpad, yet it doesn't matter which of my two (admittedly fairly old but eminently serviceable) mice are plugged in.

It's a real pain for me because I'll be typing for a short period of time, then need to click on something that I either don't know the keyboard shortcut for or for which there isn't one, and then go back to typing. This happens very frequently and it's currently driving me insane, and worse, to use the trackpad. The trackpad inherently annoys me, but that's another story. Help me, hive mind!

posted by Magnakai to computers & internet (2 comments total)

I don't know about OSX, but many Windows based laptops have a power save function which can disable the USB ports for power purposes. You might be able to turn this feature off.
posted by slavlin at 8:13 PM on January 7

Some optical mice, even corded ones, go into a kind of standby mode where they only check for movement every second or so. You usually can see them flashing if that's the case. It can take a second or two for them to notice you're moving them and bring themselves back to full mode.

One of the features of my Razer (gaming) mouse is "always on", so you never get that delay if you haven't moved the mouse for a minute or two.

Or it could be a stupid power saving trick as slavlin says.
posted by krisjohn at 9:20 PM on January 7