Home > Consumer Reviews > Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse

The mouse is great. The buttons can all be selected to do different things. I can click the scroll wheel and Expose will be activated. I use the side buttons for Dashboard. Very convenient.

Now the annoying problem: it becomes dirty quick and the scroll ball soon becomes unusable. This is easily remedied however. For all people with the scroll ball issues all it takes is vigourous cleaning. Put a bit of whatever cleaning product you use for your Keyboard and simply scrub over the ball so it. Push into it and spin it round. After you have finished it should then work again.

If it wasn't for this I'd give it 5 stars. Hoping Apple will bring the multitouch to the mouse. Or at the very least update to a new version so that we don't have this annoying problem. White is just a terrible choice for something so frequently handled.

I've owned 2 of these Wireless Mighty Mouse for a while. I've bought the 1st one in Sep 2006 together with my MacBook and the 2nd in 2007. I learnt to take care the hard way. This is because I bought the 2nd unit thinking I won't be able fix the rolling ball. I eventually fixed it and since then I have an extra moue. At least now I don't have to carry the mouse with me when I take the laptop with me to the Fac. This is what I learnt from this bad experience: to get a consistent cleaning you'd better wet a paper towel or similar in alcohol and then slide the mouse against the wet towel upside down while spinning the ball. Spinning the ball vigorously against a dry towel can temporally unstuck it but it won't last whereas with alcohol it will work smoothly for weeks or even months.

On regard of the battery life, this mouse can fit 2 large capacity AA batteries, what I really appreciate (I hope AAA type would left aside in any portable device since they run out much sooner and AAA rechargeable batteries usually range from as expensive to far more expensive). Even so I my impression is that this mouse runs out of charge in just a few days, I would say it uses up a couple of batteries in no more than 50 hours of activity. This is a good reason to use rechargeable batteries as I've always done. I moved to rather expensive 4000mAh rechargeable batteries but I didn't notice a big improvement. Therefore my advise is to stick with cheap low-end ones and buy a few more spare batteries for replacement. It could also be that my battery charger doesn't fully recharge the batteries, I should check that but it would mean purchasing another charger. Even so, unlike the 2500mAh, I can use the 4000mAh with my cheap Coolpix digital camera for long, so my guess is that the charger is filling the 4000mAh batteries. Even with the 4000mAh the Mighty Mouse runs out of charge rather soon.

I'd like to comment two additional issues: unlike many other optical mice in the market the laser of this mouse is too sensitive to the surface becoming very, very imprecise. You will probably require a good hard mousepad. A cheap one doesn't help much. Paper sheets don't work either. If you finally find an adequate surface the pointer will move with precision and smoothly along the screen. This handicap can make the Mighty Mouse not a very good option to travel with unless you are wiling to carry your mousepad with you. By the way, I've found that on plastic placemats sold as Disneyland souvenirs the mouse performs also quite well, while being much larger than the regular mouse pads.

The 2nd issue isn't directly related with the mouse but with the Mac OS X. Tracking at maximum speed is still slow in Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard. It needs a lot of movement of the hand what means you can easily surpass the limits of a small-sized mousepad, what as I said above in my opinion is almost a need for this model. In contrast, I don't have this problem working with Windows XP. The mouse tracks quite fast and is still precise. Most times I have my laptop attached to a 1920x1200p display what is probably worsening the problem. Even so, working with Win XP with the same computer and display gives much better results. I think Apple should widen the tracking speed range in the future, although at this point I'm pessimistic since in the last three years has done nothing to improve that feature.

I think this mouse shouldn't deserve more than 3 stars. I give an additional one since it is the only mouse I know with an omnidirectional wheel (aka the rolling wheel). Unfortunately, this feature doesn't work with Windows. I'd like that Apple should have include at least within the Boot Camp drivers the side motion for the ball since with many Windows mice you can get side motion once their drivers are set up.

Sorry for my lack of style in my English. I'm a foreigner living in a non-English speaking country which takes little care for their children education and skill in state and high schools. I started studying English in my 20s, I bet you can guess right which country is. Even so, I thought I could manage to share my previous experience with some newcomer user.

I'm using it with my macbook so I didn't want any wires at all. The mouse integrates very well with the mac, it is completely wireless as it runs off the mac's inbuilt Bluetooth.

The mouse is also easy to use and set-up. It took a minute without a glance at the instructions to get the mouse paired to the computer, the apple utility basically does it all for you.

The side clicks work very well to bring up exposé as a preset. Left and right click are easy to use. The other click is on the scroll wheel. This is pre-set to bring up the dashboard. However, as with all the buttons, you can program it to do whatever you like very easily in the system preferences. For example, I set my middle click to bring up spaces. This means I can bring up all my spaces with the middle click, and then use the side click function to bring up exposé, showing me all my windows in every space at once.

Battery life is miraculous. I haven't read it anywhere, but I think that the mouse goes to sleep when not in use, and so conserves battery life. When using standard AA batteries it seems to be able to go for about 1/3rd of a year for me.

In terms of cleaning the mouse, all is made clear in the instructions. I find that often wetting my finger and using the ball a little harder than normal does the trick. If not I turn the mouse upside down and roll it about on the ball on a clean sheet of paper. Does the job every time, good as new. I've owned the mouse now for over a year and I've had to do this twice.

I would definitely recommend this mouse to laptop users because it makes life so much easier. The mouse is highly portable and is quite robust.

So in short, this mouse really is as good as it looks and is highly ergonomic and intuitive to use, fitting right into the palm of your hand.

I loved this mouse from the very beginning - its ability to work on almost any surface without a mouse pad is a big plus. Some of the functionality like displaying all open windows by pressing the buttons on the side of the mouse (if programmed) is easier accessible with the mouse. What I find distracting every now and then is that it's easy to press the side buttons when you do a drag&drop operation, so depending on what functions you have programmed this can be very annoying. The scroll ball seems a little too small but feels right when you get used to it. Sometimes the horizontal movements are a bit too rapid but I assume that can be adjusted with the mouse configuration. Overall a good device, I don't regret the purchase!

I have to admit that is just an amazing idea for mouse BUT IT DOESN'T WORK
I have the wireless for more than one year and i have problem from the secong month with the dragball. however i found out that all my friends have the same problem. I contacted Apple they sent to turn the mouse upside down and scroll it in a piece of paper. it is working only for one day , then the same... Its a pity .. One start and it is too much .. i'm expecting an update from macintosh. I don't think there is someone outhere who haven't experienced the same problem