I swapped my mouse at home last night for a generic optical mouse. Everyone says they’re better, after all. My old mouse wasn’t horrible, but had seen better days and was of an all too common shape seemingly designed to hurt my hand and wrist.

Anyway, the new mouse jumps around. No smooth, predictable scrolling across the screen. It steps backwards in little blips. It deviates up or down. Sometimes it looks for all the world as if the mouse pointer is climbing over a bump. It’s hard to get fine control to click on small things, which is the problem with the old mouse, only less so. Yeesh.

At first I blamed the mouse pad. It has colors and patterns that could have explained the odd movements. The fake wood grain was no better. Plain white paper was no better. Apparently this is just the way it is.

A shame, because it is more comfortable, with a lower profile. My favorite mouse ever also had the lowest profile every. It was a Mouse Systems brand serial mouse, which I still have for the Pentium 200 I never run anymore. Heck, I suppose I could hook it to a more modern machine and see if it works. It is not rounded side to side at all. It never gets very high, with a longer flat slope on the hand end, which starts down a short slope on the button end, just before the buttons begin. Most comfortable mouse ever.

I need to start paying particular attention to my mouse and desk usage and hardware. My hand is bothering me so much it’s almost debilitating at times.