26 Oct
2002
26 Oct
'02
8:33 a.m.
Rumor has it that Sark may have mentioned these words:
That's an easy one... Way back when, most mouse balls were just solid
rubber and/or plastic... and they sucked. A few of the "good" mice (that
ran $50+ at the time) had the steel-ball-covered-with-rubber balls and were
1) rather rare, and 2) highly sought after. When I was a tech, when one of
the "good mice" died horribly, the first thing I did was grab the heavier
ball before it hit "File 13." Over the next few months, as the next few
"good mice" died, I *made sure* I had at least a few spares, because on
occasion (when my mouse didn't work nearly so well) I found my nice, heavy,
steel-core mouse ball had "grown legs"... :-/
I had to get rather "inventive" on where to hide my spares so they didn't
disappear, either... :-)
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
zmerch(a)30below.com
What do you do when Life gives you lemons,
and you don't *like* lemonade?????????????
The same Stores
also once such their ID plate on the bottom of a mouse,
over the ball (!). OK, that one didn't do any real damage, but...
A similar thing happened where I work. They etched the name into the
bottom of the mice on several Macintosh computers... But the tool they
used created raised edges around the letters, so therefore the mice
wouldn't work very well, because it would catch and drag on the mousemat.
I've also seen a similar thing happen, where they used a soldering iron
to melt the ball covers in place on the Macintosh mice, and this dragged
on the mousemat even worse, and the mice soon became useless junk because
the mechanism got so dirty it wouldn't work. To fix these, we had to
unscrew the top cover of the mouse and disassemble it to clean it. It was
a real pain. And they thought people would steal mouse balls WHY?