Earlier this year, in my work as a system administrator, I was assigned to investigate why approximately 40 co-workers (out of 1700 using a PC or Mac) were having USB optical mouse issues. The symptoms were generally the same. While using the computer, the user's USB optical mouse would simply stop working. If they flipped the mouse over, it was as though the mouse was powered off. The laser would appear to have shut off. If they unplugged and re-plugged the mouse, it would nearly always come back to life. Only once in a while was it necessary to reboot the machine. Once in a great while, the USB keyboard would stop working as well. Again, unplugging and re-plugging seemed to fix it.

When I went through my first round of problems early in the year, a lengthy investigation proved that all of my 40 cases could be solved by performing the following steps:

1. Update the system BIOS from the manufacturer's web site. Sometimes this corrected the issue and no more work was needed.
2. Update the motherboard chipset drivers from the manufacturer's web site. Sometimes this corrected the issue and no more work was needed.
3. Update the mouse drivers from the mouse manufacturer's web site. Again, sometimes this corrected the issue and no more work was needed.
4. Replace the mouse with another mouse from stock.
5. Replace the keyboard with another keyboard from stock.
6. Install a self-powered USB hub between the computer and the mouse/keyboard.

The above 6 remedies seemed to take care of all 40 users.

Then, about 3 weeks ago, the problem reared its ugly head again. This time, the above 6 steps didn't work. People who were run through all 6 of them still had the problem. Our help desk bumped the problem back to me to resolve, since I'd handled the one earlier in the year.

This time I went through a pretty thorough search on the web, Microsoft's knowledgebase, Dell's knowledgebase, etc. What I learned was interesting. When I searched for mouse failures as a whole, probably 99% of the time it was an optical mouse that failed. Moreover, it was almost always a USB optical mouse that failed. This was true on Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, and one or two other lesser-known operating systems. The brand of mouse didn't seem to matter, either. I read about the problem existing with every major brand and even some generic types. It made me wonder about the reliability of USB optical mice.

As a troubleshooting step, I suggested that we identify 1-2 of our users who were having the most "mouse failures". We swapped them with some new mechanical (i.e., old "ball style") mice from stock. The problems vanished for those users. As a follow-up step, I attacked the users' former optical mice to my system. Sure enough, I began seeing the problem myself.

An interesting observation occurred when we had one user who wanted to attach both an older mechanical mouse and an optical mouse to his Windows XP Pro system at the same time. He found that his optical mouse would fail, while the mechanical one kept working normally. (And again, when I swapped his optical mouse for mine, I began to see the problem myself.)

Another interesting observation was made after we installed Microsoft Windows XP Hotfix 914015 and 918365 on the affected systems. Occasionally the mouse would stop working as before, but within a couple of seconds it tended to come back to life on its own without any effort. (Please do not ask me for these hotfixes. If Microsoft won't provide them to you, I can't help as it would be illegal to do so.)

So it appears to me at the moment that we may have two separate issues here. The first issue is that there is a bug in the Windows XP Pro USB stack that causes a mouse to go offline if it asks to have the USB controller reset due to an error. The Microsoft hotfix takes care of that. The other issue is that we seem to have quite a few defective USB mice on-hand. In fact, I pulled one randomly out of stock and tested it, and it turned out to be defective. I confirmed this by attaching it to a Mac OS X system (in addition to a Windows XP system) and finding the same result, the mouse quit working.

I have a suspicion that the reliability of USB optical mice is not as high as we all might think. Just gauging from the numbers I'm seeing at our site, as many as 3% of the optical mice in use are in fact defective. Whether this is just the failure rate we should expect or whether it's symptomatic of a widespread defect in USB optical mice, I don't know.

In any case, it's caused me to add a few items to the above list of 6 steps:

7. Apply Microsoft Hotfix 914015 (if it's a Windows XP system).
8. Apply Microsoft Hotfix 918365 (if it's a Windows XP system).
9. Test the user's mouse on a system that isn't currently experiencing the mouse issue and give the user a mouse that hasn't been shown so far to have the problem.
10. Swap the optical mouse with a mechanical (roller ball type) mouse.
11. If the system and mouse support it, try installing the mouse on a PS/2 port instead of USB. We didn't see these issues with PS/2 mice on any platform.

Those steps, so far, seem to eliminate the problem in all cases. Perhaps they'll help you if you're experiencing a problem with your USB mouse.

It should come as no secret or surprise to you that the Chinese are not known for having great respect for intellectual property laws. For years, they've flooded the world with bootleg music CDs, video games, DVDs, etc. They've also cloned popular pieces of high-tech gadgetry, such as the iPod. Korea and Japan were known for doing the same thing in prior decades. However, Korea and Japan were chased down by American (and other) intellectual property attorneys and eventually stopped (or at least radically decreasde) their efforts to pirate high tech inventions. In fact, they soon developed the expertise to develop and improve on those inventions, doing our own inventors one better in many cases.

There is a great deal of effort being poured into stopping the flood of illegal Chinese copies into the rest of the world. That pressure will inevitably give the pirates pause, and cause them to consider producing truly innovative goods as the Japanese and Koreans did before them. With China's abundant human and natural resources, they'll have the ability to crank out their goods more cheaply and in more quantity than perhaps any nation on Earth.

That's what I mean when I say that American industry could be shooting itself in the foot. By chasing down the Chinese outfits that are reverse engineering and cloning products like the Apple iPod and iPhone, they are in fact pushing the Chinese to develop their own technological expertise and design know-how. There is evidence, in fact, that this may already be happening.

Consider the Meizu miniOne, a phone patterned after the Apple iPhone. It's not a knock-off, per se. It doesn't run OS X, but Linux (or Windows CE according to some reports). It doesn't pretend to be an Apple product. Its specifications are impressive. The screen is 3.32 inches versus Apple's 3.5. Its resolution is 720x480 (standard DVD resolution) versus Apple's 320x480 (VHS resolution). The miniOne will be offered in 4, 8, and 16GB sizes. It will feature a 3 megapixel camera versus Apple's 2 megapixel camera. It will be the same thickness as the iPhone, but shorter and narrower. It doesn't use the potentially problematic MultiTouch display but a standard touchscreen.

Why is the miniOne significant? Consider several key points about it. First, it isn't just a feature-by-feature clone of Apple's iPhone. It's actually a different technology, utilizing design concepts inspired by the iPhone. But it also goes the iPhone one better. It will include a user-removable battery and a variety of functions the iPhone doesn't offer, such as the ability to work on any wireless carrier's network. Since I haven't gotten to play with an iPhone or a miniOne, I can't offer more of a comparison than the links I've provided above, but I can tell you that given the choice between a miniOne and an iPhone, I'd rather have the miniOne hands down. Regardless of whether it's based on Linux or Windows Mobile, I'll have much better odds finding and installing any apps I want on the miniOne.

If the Chinese can continue to innovate in this way, they won't need to be "cloning" our products in the near future. We'll want them because they're actually better...

I've seen this little "scam" a few times now and I've decided it's time to say something about them so that hopefully a few of you won't fall victim to them. The scam starts with an innocent-looking advertisement that promises to give you access to lots of music, movies, and other downloads cheaply, or even free. I've even seen such advertisements in banner ads and even in Google AdSense blocks like the one on this page.

You're usually directed to a page like the one I'm linking to here. This page tells you that you'll "find and download movies, music, and your favorite TV series" and that you will "get instant access to unlimited DVD quality movies (including new releases". It shows pictures of movies like "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", TV shows like "Desperate Housewives", and more. The implication from the ad is that by purchasing some software they are selling, you'll have access to some great network of "759,989 users" with "over 95,000,000 media files" that you can transfer to your computer or iPod.

What they're not telling you, unless you click on the link marked "Legal Disclaimer" is that they are selling you Peer-to-Peer (P2P) software. They're also not telling you that P2P software is generally available free of charge. The "service" they're selling you is most likely access to a list of links to P2P networks where you can download copyrighted movies, music, software, etc. While such materials ARE freely available on those networks, downloading such items from P2P networks is most definitely ILLEGAL and will open you up to prosecution. This is explained in their legal disclaimer, and is pretty much the opposite of what the rest of the site indicates. They imply that you'll be downloading the latest movies (for example) for free, but in the disclaimer they explain that doing this would be illegal.

So what we have here is someone attempting to rip off those who aren't familiar with P2P networks and the law. They charge the people $39.99 for "unlimited access" to P2P networks which cost nothing to access in the first place. They give people the impression that they can download anything they find on such networks safely and legally. Only in the disclaimer do they tell you that you'd actually be breaking the law if you do what they suggest. And believe me, the way the authorities are watching P2P networks these days, you'll very likely be caught.