USB or Bluetooth mouse for netbook?

[musther]

I'm getting a Lenovo IdeaPad soon - I'll be taking out the hard drive and putting in an SSD to improve battery life and ruggidity (not a word I know!).

My question is, for best battery life, should I use a small USB optical mouse, or a bluetooth optical mouse. Here are my thoughts:

USB:
- Uses netbook power for all it's operations, optical sensor and LED etc.
- Bluetooth can be turned off, saving power (radio off at hardware level).

Bluetooth:
- Requires Bluetooth to be turned on (radio on at hardware - using power)
- Bluetooth mouse powers it's own operations with internal AA battery

So, it comes down to, which is likely, under normal use, to use less power:
1 - Powering a USB mouse
2 - Powering a bluetooth wireless link (one side of)

[init1]

I'd go with USB if I had to choose between the two, but I prefer just to use the trackpad.

[linuxguymarshall]

I thought about USB for my netbook but then decided that with Bluetooth I get a mouse, keyboard, headset, and phone connections so I went with the RocketFish micro bluetooth adaptor. It is perfect.

[mr.propre]

Doesn't really matter, the up-time of a laptop battery just extends whit 15 min tops with bluetooth off.

[musther]

Yeah, but with a netbook, with the small screen dimmed to low, and an SSD, it will make much more difference.

[mr.propre]

Than I hope you mean a IdeaPad because a ThinkPad is still 100% laptop (last time I checked).

You can offcource save on every detail but in thinkpad's case your better replace the normal battery drive and the DVD-rom with 2x9-cell battery's

[musther]

Yep, my mistake, writing ThinkPad rather than IdeaPad... How many times will I do that!

Cheers.

[zmjjmz]

I mis-voted because I thought you were getting a Thinkpad, so I was going to recommend using the trackpoint.
Anyways, I use a small USB OfficeMax mouse.

[musther]

Yeah, that's exactly the type of USB mouse I was looking at.

[Spr0k3t]

If you want the longest battery life, just use the built in trackpad. If you want something easy and the netbook has built in bluetooth, the choice is obvious. If you need a mouse and don't want to bother with the trackpad, the best route would be USB mouse if you don't already have bluetooth. The USB mouse would still utilize the same amount of power as a bluetooth dongle... if not less. The power usage would still be almost negligible betwixt the three options.

[zmjjmz]

The USB mouse can use a little wire retractor device if you don't like wires.

[MikeTheC]

Bluetooth mice have response issues. Having tried one, I would never own one.

Either go with USB or, if you really want wireless, then consider going with something like this Logitech mouse (http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/mice_pointers/mice/devices/3271&cl=us,en) which is wireless but who's wireless module has such an insanely small profile you can leave it plugged in and not really have to worry about it sticking out when you put it in a bag or move it around or put the notebook into close-quarters situations.