PERHAPS you were not aware a mouse needs extra loving care sometimes? I wasn't. When my original mouse began moving the cursor jerkily, or not at all, I rushed out and bought another one - so now I have two which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Thanks to my Scottish ancestry I kept the first mouse - and found out months later that these hard-working creatures have to be cleaned sometimes. Dust and gunge gather around the simple inner workings - particularly when a mouse shares the hearth with moulting cats and dogs.

Last week when I was putting together one of my ezines, which always involves plenty of highlighting, copying and pasting, the mouse suddenly lost the ability to highlight text properly. Fuming, I swapped mice (mouses?) and met the ezine deadline - remembering the next day that the offending mouse hadn't been cleaned for ages.

There's no excuse for neglecting mouse maintenance when it's so simple. Well relatively. In theory you turn the mouse over and note that the circular disc surrounding the 'ball' is marked with arrows. You then remove this disc by pressing with your fingers, as directed by the arrows. Once the disc comes away the 'ball' falls out and you get on with the cleaning.

Well I did say in theory. I find the disc is usually quite reluctant to pop out and I have come very close to removing it by brute force. Please don't. Patience pays off and you will have that 'ball' in your hand, eventually.

Probe the now exposed inner compartment, gently, with a slender, sharp object, and you will be able to shake, or hook out, quite a lot of dirt. Of course if you break the little wheel or tiny rollers the mouse still won't operate, even if it is squeaky clean.

Then replace the 'ball' and disc, and get back to work. If cleaned regularly your mouse shouldn't cause problems, but of course it will fade away and die one day. (I am sure all mechanical objects are carefully designed to do exactly that.)

When this happens, think about replacing it with an optical mouse. I understand these have neither a rolling ball, nor moving parts, and never require this special attention.

Copyright 2001 Sheldene Chant