Laser mice: help!

[darsu]

A while ago I bought a laser mouse to replace my old ball mouse which was falling apart. I hated the new mouse and I thought I'd bought a low-quality lemon: I couldn't get precise slow movement out of it. When moving the cursor slowly, for instance when tracing a circle or complex shape or even just a diagonal line in GIMP, the cursor would jitter here and there and not respond reliably to the mouse's movements. It was like using a ball mouse that's full of dirt that makes the cursor fight back as I try to move it. The jitter would get less pronounced if I moved the mouse fast, and there was no jitter at all when moving in a straight vertical or horizontal line. This was not a mousepad problem. The behavior was similar on any surface.

Now I've bought a second mouse, a Logitech M305, also a laser mouse. It does the same thing.

Laser mice are said to be much more precise than ball mice, but both of the ones I've used are much worse than the decade old no-name ball thing I threw away. Am I doing something wrong? Have I bought two bad mice in a row? Does Linux require jumping through some specific hoops to get more precise movement? Has anyone here had problems like this with laser mice? Please, someone, respond.

[cmay]

A while ago I bought a laser mouse to replace my old ball mouse which was falling apart. I hated the new mouse and I thought I'd bought a low-quality lemon: I couldn't get precise slow movement out of it. When moving the cursor slowly, for instance when tracing a circle or complex shape or even just a diagonal line in GIMP, the cursor would jitter here and there and not respond reliably to the mouse's movements. It was like using a ball mouse that's full of dirt that makes the cursor fight back as I try to move it. The jitter would get less pronounced if I moved the mouse fast, and there was no jitter at all when moving in a straight vertical or horizontal line. This was not a mousepad problem. The behavior was similar on any surface.

Now I've bought a second mouse, a Logitech M305, also a laser mouse. It does the same thing.

Laser mice are said to be much more precise than ball mice, but both of the ones I've used are much worse than the decade old no-name ball thing I threw away. Am I doing something wrong? Have I bought two bad mice in a row? Does Linux require jumping through some specific hoops to get more precise movement? Has anyone here had problems like this with laser mice? Please, someone, respond.

i had more than one laser mouse that did this. i found a couple of good laser mouses along the way both logitech but i think i still have over ten old trackball mouses i uses more often. they are better than any laser mouse. but outdated by now and hard to get new ones.

my best mouse is the logitech five buttons and the worst i have is a cheap wireless that is so unusable that i cant even give it away to anyone.

[hessiess]

I don't know how to fix the twitching problem, however if you are doing graphics I highly recommend that you get a Graphics Tablet, even the cheep ones are good, at least from Wacom.

[Dragonbite]

What is the laser mouse being used on?

Try putting down a piece of plain white paper on a flat table-top (not on a mousepad) and see if it is any more precise with the smooth, solid and consistent surface.

My optical mouse sometimes gives me trouble but I find usually has to do with the surface or the signal (it's wireless) to the actual transmitter (on the back of the laptop).

Oh, if you go with a tablet, get a Wacom. I have an Adesso and it does NOT work as a tablet in Linux (works like a mouse, but not a tablet)

[Skripka]

Do you have a pet in your house?

Something like a thread of cat fur, caught over the laser aperture will cause these symptoms.

[Kimm]

I own to laser mice, both work fine on my "special laser mousepad", the one I use now is a Logitech G5 (pretty expensive for a mouse), but I've also got a cheep one I got at a supermarket (Brand: Lumatron) that works fine, its wireless so I use that for my laptop and to control video on my stationary computer from the couch :-P

[darsu]

Thank you for chiming in, everyone. At least I haven't lost my marbles if someone else has experienced this as well.

In my opinion the fact that the cursor moves perfectly fine and precisely in horizontal and vertical directions contraindicates dirt or the surface as the culprit, and I've tried both mice on many surfaces and this mousepad here is supposed to be a "special laser mousepad" too. It feels as if the optical tracking algorithm was failing at low speeds when the mouse moves simultaneously on both axes.

Now if there only was a store somewhere that let me try mice before buying.