Mouse pointer locking up on A4tech scrollball mouse
Tim
ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au
Sun Jan 27 15:38:05 UTC 2008
Tim:
>> Obvious questions:
>>
>> Does the same problem occur if you use a different mouse?
>> Do you mind using a different mouse?
Nigel Henry:
> I havn't tried a different mouse, that is apart from having replaced it
> recently with a new one of the same make and model, and still get these
> infrequent mouse pointer lockups.
I forgot to mention that I do have one or two A4tech mice, and I have
had other (*) problems with them on some boxes, that I didn't have when
I tried some other USB mice. In my case it was mice, rather than
trackballs, but the electronics technology is the same, just the
mechanical side of things is upside down.
* Not lock-ups, but mouse pointers that suddenly started racing all over
the screen, and clicking everywhere. At least one of them was worse on
a PS/2 extension cord than without. That points the finger at, at
least, three potential reasons: Knackered PS/2 ports. Data signal
strength/interference issues. And poor power to the mouse causing its
encoder chip to act unreliably.
There's another thing to point the finger at: How Linux handles
keyboards and mice. When I've had dual-boot boxes, I've been able to
compare Linux with peculiar keyboard and mice behaviour against Windows
with zero such problems, all on the same hardware.
> I can't really try the standard mouse, as there isn't any room for a mouse mat
> in front of my keyboard, but I'll buy a different make of scrollball mouse,
> and see if the problem goes away.
A bit of an expensive test... You can't borrow something else for a
trial, even if you use it outside of your usual work space?
I do wish keyboard navigation worked better in Linux. There's any
number of times I would have liked to just click on the keyboard to move
around some GUI, but I'm damned if I could find a hotkey sequence to get
to where I needed to be.
And I'm amazed that there never was a huge demand for touch screen
technology to become widespread (Windows, Linux, whatever). The mouse
is an ergonomic nightmare, never mind the technical issues.
--
(This computer runs FC7, my others run FC4, FC5 & FC6, in case that's
important to the thread.)
Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
I read messages from the public lists.
More information about the fedora-list
mailing list