Longevity of mice . . .

[leco]

. . . of the optical kind that is. Do they have a lifespan? Recently I have found two dead mice in the laptop trolley. All were bought at the same time (Logitech) and I'm wondering if something is killing them off one by one or they have died a natural death. Any observations?

[ICT_GUY]

Our kids bang them on the desk if they don't work 100%, that usually kills them pretty quick.

[leco]

Our kids bang them on the desk if they don't work 100%, that usually kills them pretty quick.

 

Haven't seen any abuse of this kind - our pupils are fairly careful being Primary age.

[localzuk]

We went through a phase of kids banging them on the table, or yanking on them, or knocking them on the floor. So they all usually die by having their cables yanked out of them...

 

Hence my buying about 40 new mice a year, for 200 desktop machines.

[leco]

Hence my buying about 40 new mice a year, for 200 desktop machines.

 

Ouch, sizeable hole in budget there, well it would be in mine anyway. These don't normally get yanked or banged, carefully out of trolley, placed on tables, just as carefully put back. Especially if I'm there to supervise - healthy fear of IT tech:)

Edited May 15, 2009 by leco

[MatthewL]

We get the odd one or two Dell ones go here and there but our big problem is people borrowing mice to ues for their laptops and not returning them or users taking them home when there one breaks (well thats my theory), I've got a box full of them from when new machines have come in from Dell as we don't always replace them when we swap the PC out.

[Crispin]

Wow I can't believe how few mice you get through. We just bought 200 logitech mice, only £1 each. Hopefully they'll last the year but who knows. 800 desktops here though.

 

We actually keep all the dead mice and repair pretty much all of them, they usually just need resoldering.

[EduTech]

it is funny you should say that i suppose it is slightly different for us as we are secondary (in which case you would think they would have more sense not to yank the mice and throw them about) but yes it happens here they get abused like hell poor things.

 

We have had quite a few mice break lately in fact we have no run out. one thing we did get though were little bits of dirt in the way of the optical lense so with a blow they did work ok.

 

We brought 40 new mouse and keyboards, we have 35 keyboards and no mice left lol. and this was only a few months ago.

[jedmondson]

i had to get 20 new mice in the other mounth because we have had a few with pulled cables .

[maniac]

it's usually the cable that gets pulled out of them, although we've not been suffering from this too much lately. All our cables are zip tied together behind the computer to prevent theft, although somehow we still get the odd one or two go missing from time to time!

[Batman]

Usually we have to change mice (and keyboards) because the kids pull the buttons off.

 

If they ever yank the cables out I fix them... you just snip the cable, strip the wires and solder to the board, it's quick and easy! Doesn't happen that often though.

[pinemarten]

giving the offenders pen and paper for a week might do the trick.

 

oh, but we can't do that, can we - it might stigmatise them

[leco]

All very interesting. These are the first opticals I have had that have "died" so I'm obviously quite lucky. Thanks for the tips, I'll take them apart to see if the cables are dislocated, though I'm not up to soldering. Yes I know ... but I don't actually have a soldering iron.

[plexer]

logitech opticals for £1 each where did you get them?

[Batman]

giving the offenders pen and paper for a week might do the trick.

 

oh, but we can't do that, can we - it might stigmatise them

 

It would be nice to just catch them, but nobody ever knows who it was...

[Sylv3r]

We have a low replacement cycle, but I tend to buy the cheapest optical mice I can find so if any do need replacing its not particularly costly to the budget.

 

We have 850ish PC's across the school and replace around about 50 optical mice a year maximum. We still have around 30 non-optical mice in small clusters around the school which will be tracked down in the next week or so and replaced with optical mice.

[Crispin]

logitech opticals for £1 each where did you get them?

 

We get them from a local company called Silicon Alley here who does very good prices for us. But when they're gone they're gone kinda deal.

 

We also have a printer cartridge 'minibar' set up with them, which means we don't spend nearly as much time ordering cartridges, they just do it.

It can be worthwhile making strong links with the local companies.