Best mouse for notebook battery

Which mouse uses the least power from the notebook battery? I got a Logitech MiniMouse from Walmart for my Centrino laptop, and whenever that thing is plugged in, my cpu runs at it's full speed ALL the time, and gets hot. Yanking that mouse out the USB port lowers my megahertz to 130-300 while idling. I spent the extra money for a Pentium-M processor to save on battery life, I'd rather have a mouse that does not cancel it out (This thing kills my battery within an hour!)

Any experiences with USB/PS2 mice on battery life would be greatly appreciated. Let me know your experiences please! I have a TravelMate 291Lmi

 

Hi Javyn,
The mouse I was using on my thinkpad was causing the same power suckage. Probably anything connected to the USB port will cause a big increase in battery drain.

What I did to fix the problem was just bite the bullet and not use a mouse, in very little time I could go just as fast or faster without the mouse. Now I just have the mouse in my bag so that if someone who is not familiar with notebooks can use it. I'm glad I can now get along better without it cause it was a hassle to pull it and plug it in everytime I needed to turn my notebook on and have the wires dangling all over.

Goood luck in your quest, and you might try using your notebook without the mouse...you may find after the learning curve your faster without it.

Jack

 

yeah thats what i figured would happen, so i've been practicing the dang touchpad. i really hate these things. im slow, and it makes my fingers sore. i was hoping that there was some energy saving mouse out there as a last resort. heheh. i almost got a thinkpad myself, those eraserhead pointers are nice. i like them better than the touchpads. but oh well, i guess i'll get used to it

 

Is that mouse optical or ball? Try them both. The optical mouse is constantly giving off light, so maybe that drains power?

Dell 8600
1.8 dothan SXGA+
128mb radeon 9600PRO TURBO
512mb RAM

 

i went ahead and got one of those antek mini mice off ebay. the really really tiny ones. just like this logitech, it makes my processor run at a constant 601mhz minimum, and causes the same battery issue. yank out the mouse, and my processor speed drops to 50-150mhz with the computer just sitting here idling. looks to be no way around it, i'll have to use the touchpad when im mobile, and get one of those laptop cooling pads to keep the heat down while i got my mouse plugged into it at home for gaming, graphic, and any other work where you need a precise pointer. i just find it funny that of all the USB crap i have to plug into this thing, LED Lights, printers, usb to serial converter, etc....that the mouse is the one that sucks battery. i'm not going to even bother with a ps2 mouse since you can't hot swap them.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by javyn

 

See if you can find a utility to manually manage power settings. You could probably lower the processor speed, but check to make sure the mouse isn't jerky when you do.