Mouse jumpiness, problems, issues...

[Friedcherry]

Ever since moving over to the mac from the PC 4 years ago my biggest complaint is the mouse drivers/movement. I have used USB Overdrive and Steermouse with mild success.

In that 4 years I have probably spent over $1000 trying to find the perfect mouse for me. Up until now never used the mouse supplied with the Mac. My current computer is a MacPro that came with a mighty mouse. Never used it. I just bought my son an iMac and he wanted to use one of my logitech mice so I took the magic mouse and started using it just to see.

I was extremely impressed with the movement of the cursor and how smooth it was. The issue I have with it is now after about 30 min of using it I have a sharp pain in my wrist. So I need to go back to an ergonomic mouse.

I am sitting here testing every mouse I have ever owned trying to figure out what will work for me. What I am starting to see though is the cursor movement is jumpy. And what I mean by that is if I move the magic mouse slowly in a straight line, the cursor stays straight. If I use any of the logitech or MS mice I have if I do the same thing, the cursor jumps 2-3 pixels up or down.

Mice I have tested:
Logitech MX610
MX Revolution
MX1000
MX700
G5
G7
MX518
MouseMan Dual Sensor
Razor Lachesis
Razor Naga
LX3
Intellimouse Explorer

There are a couple more but can't find them.

I do some work in photoshop but not enough to get a tablet and this is a massive pain when I am doing things in photoshop.

Has anyone come across these issues and if so how did you over come them?

Thanks!

 

[Jamie-Jamie]

I own a Logitech laser mouse of some kind and it's perfectly smooth. I don't use anything to mess with the settings. I just plug it in. My main pointing device is a TrackMan Wheel. It, too, is perfectly smooth. Again... no additional software. Maybe you should ditch the overdrive stuff and just try without it.

 

[EndlessMac]

What I am starting to see though is the cursor movement is jumpy. And what I mean by that is if I move the magic mouse slowly in a straight line, the cursor stays straight. If I use any of the logitech or MS mice I have if I do the same thing, the cursor jumps 2-3 pixels up or down.

If you are using an optical mouse you have to use the right kind of mouse pad. I have noticed that my Logitech optical mouse will behave somewhat like you have described or other weird behaviors on certain surfaces. Try using different mouse pads and see if your problem persists. Optical mice will work on a lot of different types of surfaces but I had problems with a few.

 

[chas_m]

FWIW I have a mouse pad with a built-in wrist rest. I am not prone to RSI or whatever it is the OP is suffering from but I would imagine that the wrist rest helps.

 

[Friedcherry]

I have tried many different kinds of mouse pads. Large gaming type of mouse pads like rocketfish to white cuttingboards to just the top of my desk and right now just a cheap all black thin fabric one. All with the same results.

Today I was thinking this may all be in my head so I hooked up the G5 mouse and started using it and then I brought the cursor up to the red X to close a finder window and before I pressed the button it jumped off the X about 6-8 pixels to the left. So Yeah I am not sure if it its in my head or if there is really an issue and no one had noticed it or if it even happens to them. Or I am just one really picky *******.

If anyone cares to try... take your mouse and just move it very slowly in a straight line and watch the cursor carefully and see if it jumps a few pixels.

 

[ronindavid]

For some reason, my mouse pointer is now skipping/sticking as I move around the screen. Sometimes it just jumps into corner of the screen. It's extremely bad and does it all the time. I'm using the USB Apple mouse that came with this Mac Pro (early 2008).

This is NOT a hardware issue. It has nothing to do with the mouse, keyboard it's attached, port it's attached to, or any software installed other than OSX Snow Leopard.

That's because the when I boot up OSX from the Leopard disk, the mouse works perfectly fine. I thought maybe I had a virus or something so I wiped the drive and reinstalled Leopard (mouse worked fine), then I installed Snow Leopard and updated (THEN mouse messes up all over again). Again, when I boot from Leopard disk mouse works perfectly again. NO programs have been loaded into this machine. Just the programs that come with OSX.

So this has nothing to do with the following...however I've tried all of this:
Switch to different mouse, plug into different USB port, plug mouse directly into different USB ports, rebooting PRAM (option-command-P-R during bootup and let it reboot couple of times), resetting the SMC (unplugging power plug and holding power button 5sec), turned off Bluetooth, and did a disk utility check.

I'm going to Apple Store tomorrow and will post what they say.

 

[Sonicjet]

Hey,if you like the magic mouse a company makes a wrist saver: Make your Magic Mouse more comfortable and ergonomic
BTW,I have the Lachesis and I know what you mean, the acceleration curve is just not right, the only good setup I have found was using a cheap Big Lots wireless, it felt like a windows mouse feel,not bad.