Info Is your Logitech trackball not as responsive as it used to be ?

[Corobori]

I am a huge fan of the Logitech trackballs and got several acquaintances hooked on it. One of them is my wife, who told me a few days ago that her MX Ergo would end up in the garbage bin because it was behaving poorly. Before dumping a rather costly device, I asked her for the privilege of having a look at it. By experience, I knew where to look. Obviously, the sensors were so dirty that I could barely see them. A thorough cleanup, and here we got the trackball flying again, and a happy wife.

If you bumped into the same issue, you may try cleaning up your trackball. You might need some persuasion to pop out the ball. If so, don’t use a sharp object—just use a cotton swab.

 

[Lutfij]

People who used a mouse from 3 decades ago will know that one of the maintenance tasks for said ball mouse was to clean the rollers inside said mouse and in essence (wash)clean the ball for said mouse.

View: https://youtu.be/z-lU5br8fx0?t=31


Pertaining to cleaning, use a mild soapy solution with a q-tip but using isopropyl alcohol is a no-no as that can denature plastics over time.

Glad to see you got the mouse back up and running!

 

[Corobori]

People who used a mouse from 3 decades ago will know that one of the maintenance tasks for said ball mouse was to clean the rollers inside said mouse and in essence (wash)clean the ball for said mouse.

View: https://youtu.be/z-lU5br8fx0?t=31


Pertaining to cleaning, use a mild soapy solution with a q-tip but using isopropyl alcohol is a no-no as that can denature plastics over time.

Glad to see you got the mouse back up and running!

Great video, I also tried to extract the ball as I was doing with M575, and the d... thing didn't want to get out, until I, by accident, saw that the bottom part could be removed, and from there I could pop out the ball.

 

[LordVile]

Really never got the trackballs, I used one for a while and they’re just slow and inaccurate and have the issue of building up crap unlike a laser mouse

 

[Ralston18]

I worked on a Government contract many years ago and our techs/Helpdesk really had to be careful about telling our customers that the mouse balls needed to be cleaned.
Some customers took great offense at that..... 🐀

What worked best was (without comment) to go onsite and to simply show the customer how to open the mouse bottom, take out the round ball, clean the ball and the sensors of gunk.

Some customers thought it was all funny. The others could not really or reasonably take offense.

Laser mice made it all moot.....

 

[Paperdoc]

Laser mice does not quite make this all moot because you still can get dust collected in the "window" on the bottom so the mouse cannot "see" the pad moving under it.

 

[BFG-9000]

The appeal of a heavy trackball (like in Missile Command from 1980) is that it has inertia so continues moving after your hand has released it, like those free-spinning scrollwheel modes on some modern mice. Think of the arcade version of Tempest from 1981 vs the crummy paddle controllers for your Atari--you spin it and it keeps spinning.

In any case OP's trackball is purely optical, just like an optical mouse. As an aside, rubber-coated steel ball mice are optomechanical--they have shutter wheels on the ends of the axles that LEDs shine through to register movement--the problem was schmutz collected on the two axles within a week or so to prevent them from tracking the ball properly, requiring frequent cleaning. Early trackballs used the same arrangement, only you moved the ball with your hand instead of the desktop.

It's probably the scroll wheel that did in trackballs--some had you spin the ball and others had a ring around the ball but neither solution was very satisfactory.

 

[LordVile]

Laser mice does not quite make this all moot because you still can get dust collected in the "window" on the bottom so the mouse cannot "see" the pad moving under it.

When had that ever happened to you?