Microsoft Touch Mouse’s fatal flaw

Microsoft’s Touch Mouse has a fatal flaw that didn’t show up when I wrote last month’s review: it chews through batteries.

After six weeks use, I’m now on my sixth pair of AA batteries. That’s unacceptable. It gets through a pair of batteries every week.

The mouse came with a start pack of two Energizer batteries in the box. I picked up a pack of 10 Duracell batteries at the same time. The last pair of those batteries are now in the mouse.

Heavy workload

I’ve spent long hours at the computer in recent weeks working on a couple of big projects, certainly more than 12 hours a day for six days a week. Yet, even that kind of heavy use shouldn’t make a difference.

In contrast, the batteries in my older Microsoft Wireless Mouse 5000 last for about three months – that’s roughly 12 times as long as in the Touch Mouse. It's the same brand, although clearly not the same technology.

One possibility is the batteries are all duds.

There's a manual off switch

To be fair to Microsoft, I’ve not been good at using the manual switch on the bottom of the mouse to turn it off when I’m not using my computer.

This is hard to remember and, frankly, it shouldn’t be necessary. A well-designed mouse should do a better job of managing power consumption.

Until I hear otherwise, I’m calling this a design flaw. A serious one.

Rechargables? While I’m a big fan of rechargeable batteries, I’ve found them a problem with mice and keyboards, they fade ridiculously fast and I learnt the hard way a low-charge, but seemingly functional battery in a mouse is a fast route to sore wrist and arm muscles.