You know what really annoys me? Having to clean the scroll ball on my Apple “Mighty” Mouse every other day. Do I have really dirty hands or something? Does anyone else have this problem?

It’ll be scrolling fine one second then BOOM, nothing. Occasionally I’ll be lucky enough only to lose the downward scroll with the upward still intact, but it’s still very annoying. The method for “cleaning” it is awful too. Basically you just have to roll the ball on something like a paper towel until it works.

I’m sure there is a way to take it apart and really clean it, but who wants to do that? This isn’t you standard latch-held mouse that is simple to take apart; in keeping with Apple’s excellence in design, this thing is sleek…and impossible to open neatly.

Here’s the real question: why does Apple spend millions of dollars researching and developing the “best mouse ever” only to use what seems to be the same scroll wheel technology (only this time on the top of the mouse) that existed and was popular in the 1990s? Couldn’t they come up with some way of getting the same capabilities out of lasers somehow?

Clearly you don’t hear me bashing Apple too much around here, but I’ve been using this thing for 6 months and I’m fed up. I think I may *gasp* switch to a Microsoft Mouse. I may lose the cool side scrolling feature, but I’ll gain back countless minutes spent cleaning that stupid ball.

(or maybe one of the rumored products Apple is supposedly coming out with tomorrow is a brand new Mighty Mouse…one can only dream…my money is on a Pink iPod for Valentine’s Day.)