Can someone use the term "mouses" without sounding a bit daft? I think I'll stick to mice, to be on the safe side.
My Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 3 has finally died, after a period on life-support. Six years ago something went wrong with its USB interface, which meant that it would not work correctly when my PC resumed from sleep. I solved this by setting up a scheduled task to automatically reset the USB port to which the mouse was connected whenever the PC started up or woke. This solved the problem, and I used the mouse happily until this last month, when an even worse problem reared its head.
I wonder how many left mouse button clicks I have done. Whatever that number is, it exceeds the number that this mouse is capable of. It has taken to registering single clicks as double clicks (this is unaffected by the double-click setting in Windows control panel). This causes a great many problems, such as on a website which pops up a confirm box to say "are you sure you wish to purchase this yacht?", and where I don't get the chance to decline. Also, moving a Window around by holding its title bar will instead maximise it. Many little annoyances like this lead me to search for a new mouse.
Ideally, I would purchase the same mouse again. However, it now sells for £99 on Amazon, which is probably four times what I paid originally, and far in excess of what it's worth. Instead I picked an HP 5-button optical comfort mouse for £10. It has the required side buttons for going back and forth in web browsers, and has an easily clickable scroll wheel (the scroll wheel click is used to open web sites in tabs, and on some mice, especially those with tilt wheels, the scroll wheel takes a lot of pressure to register, and inevitably scrolls up or down when you're just trying to press it). It is significantly smaller than the Microsoft mouse, but my hand is malleable. In fact, the only minor problem is that it does not like the same surfaces as the old mouse. I have always used a cloth mouse mat, on which the mouse would glide easily, whatever the humidity. The HP mouse, in contrast, barely moves on it at all. It seems to get stuck on the fabric. It doesn't like my wooden desk either, which is unvarnished, and too rough for it. For now, I'm using a temporary mouse mat made of a transparent plastic wallet, meant for holding a few sheets of paper. This works well except when the humidity is high, at which point the mouse gets a bit stuck to it.
Studying my old mouse it is difficult to discern what gave it such good gliding abilities. It glides happily on carpet, on my unvarnished wooden desk, on cloth, on almost anything. To touch, the pads on which it rests feel smoother than the HP's larger pads. Did HP skimp on lower-quality pads? Otherwise, after a week of use, it seems like a perfectly good mouse.