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The Future of Linux is Google (PCWorld)

Posted Nov 18, 2009 10:10 UTC (Wed) by edmundo (guest, #616)
In reply to: The Future of Linux is Google (PCWorld) by JoeBuck
Parent article: The Future of Linux is Google (PCWorld)

My 4-year-old daughter uses desktop Linux. It's an antique version of Debian running on an antique ThinkPad. She can log in and run Tux Paint and draw fairly recognisable pictures, which is quite impressive if you take into account how much fluff there is in the 15-year-old mouse and how sticky she keeps her mouse pad, which sometimes also serves as a mat for her hot chocolate mug when she gets back from school.

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Posted Nov 18, 2009 23:56 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Open up the bottom of the mouse.

Let the ball fall out. Take the ball and clean it up with some cool soapy
water.

Inside the bottom of the mouse you'll notice some rollers. Usually there
are two thin black rollers that are long and then a larger, shorter, white
roller that has some movement to it. Were those rollers meet the ball they
tend to compact up with dust and paper bits so that they end up having
quite a compact sticky mess.

If you take your finger nail and scrape down the roller you can usually
easily scrape off the crud. With the correct motion you can make the roller
move slightly and rotate a bit. Just keep repeating that till the roller
rolls all the way around and you pick off all the crust. It may take a
little while to get off the most stubborn bits, but they all can come off.

With that crust scraped off the mouse will run like new. :)

The Future of Linux is Google (PCWorld)

Posted Nov 19, 2009 6:50 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

...for approximately three weeks, before it gets covered in just as much fur as was there before. I don't know what it is about mice, but once they get thoroughly linted up they seem to prefer it as their default state and seek to return to it as quickly as possible; what took several months to arrive takes just days to return.

The Future of Linux is Google (PCWorld)

Posted Nov 19, 2009 12:33 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link]

Please, PLEASE buy the kid an optical mouse! Just because she's only four doesn't at all mean she can't experience extreme frustration when the mouse cursor doesn't follow what she's doing with the mouse.