A little over one year ago I received a Logitech V220 cordless notebook mouse as a gift. It’s small, high resolution and amazingly, it works for nearly six months on a single AA battery (I put a high quality battery in it). The first time the battery died I was so impressed. I put the new battery in and started working. Coincidentally I’d recently upgraded to Hardy Heron Alpha 2 or 3. I was noticed some erratic behavior where holding the mouse button down produced multiple mouse clicks. You didn’t notice it unless you were clicking and dragging, for example using the selection tool in a graphics program or highlighting a paragraph of text.

I assumed it was something related to Hardy Heron and discussed the problems with a few people. It was really a head scratcher so someone suggested I test the mouse with a different computer so we could rule it out as the culprit. Remarkably, the problem followed the mouse to the other computer. I was stunned. I opened the mouse and looked inside to see if it was a worn button. Everything looked OK. I called Logitech and they gave me instructions to return the mouse and they would send me a new one. The new one was fine and I was happy and promptly forgot the problem.

It’s been about 6 months since that incident and I’ve recently upgraded to Intrepid Ibex Beta 4. You’ll never guess what happened… my mouse battery died. Amazing how long that single cell lasted! I replaced the battery and you won’t believe it, but I’m getting the sporadic extra click problem again. Two mice in a row! What are the odds? Could this be a problem with their firmware? I don’t know. I’m getting creative… I’ve pressed the “connect” button on the bottom. I’ve also pulled the battery a few times to “reboot” the mouse. So far no improvement. I’ve just now tried turning the mouse off and holding the connect button in for a while while I turn the mouse on again. Interestingly, this causes the mouse to not function until you pull the battery.

__Rent – a – mouse__
So this causes me to think… if you go and buy a mouse for $35, what are you certain to get? I think that you can reasonably expect to have a functioning mouse for as long as the warranty period of the mouse lasts. If it dies before the warranty period you will get a replacement, but if it dies after it’s gone. In a sense its like when you purchase “software support and maintenance” instead of purchasing a perpetual license (or use OSS). In these cases you can use the software for as long as you keep paying for it, but once you stop buying support you have to stop using the product.

In the case of a product with a one year warranty, you’re basically renting the product for a year but you _may_ be able to use it slightly longer. This is especially true today when hardware feels like it’s designed to be disposable and to have a limited life in order to ensure you keep upgrading.

The good news is, Logitech’s warranty on this mouse is 3 years. The bad news is, I don’t have the receipt (it was a gift), so lets hope the support dept will be helpful.