During a visit to Microcenter as I was headed to the checkout lane, a nice smallish mouse caught my eye. It was cheap (around $15) so I figured I’d give it a shot. I got it home, popped some batteries in it, and was suprised that it worked quite well and felt good in my hand.

About a week later, I found out why it was so cheap. It started jumping around on the screen, and generally working very poorly. I quickly found out that the brand new batteries I had put into it were nearly dead. I figured, “OK, maybe the batteries were just duds” and put a couple new ones in there. Like clockwork, a week later I started experiencing the same problem.

Are these things really that bad at conserving power? I even notice that the mouse shuts itself off after a few minutes of inactivity and can only be turned back on by clicking. This was annoying but I was willing to deal with it for prolonged usage.

Long story short, I’m back to a wired mouse, never to stray again.