Topic Title

I'm reasonably sure I am on the right tram with this...

I have always hoped that my beloved red tail-light MS Intellimouse Explorer would die after I did. This turned out not to be the case, and no mouse worked as well ever since - until I replaced the computer.

I have only recently concluded that the snapping situation had gotten progressively worse over a couple of years, indeed I had finally been reduced to using the N key. So, the situation was intolerable, but I couldn't see what the villain was. For unrelated reasons, I was obliged to relocate DCad to an old laptop, and I found that the newish wireless mouse worked well. It so happened that the file I was using was huge, full of PDFs, with a fairly trivial DCad markup over. The desktop was groaning under the strain as I scrolled around but the laptop handled it a lot better. I got the hint.... Other than desktop having an additional 2Gb video card and W7 64bit, while laptop is W8.1 32bit, there isn't much difference in the specs between the two.

The desktop has now been replaced, DataCad is fine, and the Logitech M705 snaps just like it oughta. There is just no comparison.

I have concluded that DataCad, and the mice various, were innocent all along. The snapping problem was all to do with memory being progressively being clogged up. There may even have been some shared memory issue that I knew nothing about. I'm well pleased with the replacement desktop but, if I simply restored a clean operating system, I may have redeemed the old one. The demise of the Intellimouse may have been coincidental with the onset of the problem. It definitely was the best mouse.

So I wonder if this is a known problem, and post this for anybody who suffers a mysterious deterioration in snapping accuracy. Memory, not mouse, and definitely not DataCad.

You may find the hard drive was at fault on the old system. Have found this a number of times. Replaced with new ssd hd and they can become usable. Bad sectors on a drive can cause slow down problems.

DaveR

Now that was interesting....
The hard drive is at least seven years old. I have never had cause to be suss about it, but I have never tested it either. I have salvaged it, wiped it, and removed the partitions to prepare it as an off-board spare, as it won't fit in the new box. I have just scanned it under windows 10, and no errors were reported, but maybe there were errors that were rectified when I cleaned it out.

Best way I've found of testing a hard drive is to load Macruim Reflect (free edition I use) and create an image of the hard drive. Reflect will usually fail if there is a problem with the hd. If it doesn't fail then you end up with a full backup of your drive. Just check that drive you are backing up to is formatted to NTFS and not FAT32 otherwise you end up with a lot of 4gb files instead of 1 large image file.

If the drive is 7 yrs old I'd be making a clone to a new SSD drive and then putting the old drive away as a backup. The ssd's make a huge difference to the computers speed. M.2 PCIe is even faster but don't think you can clone from SATA to M.2 and if the computer is 7yrs old probably won't take M.2 drive.

DaveR

Thanx, I will have a look at Macrium. I have now burnt my bridges and have retired the tower, along with at least one 3.5 off-board HD, as I misunderstood the specs of the new small format box, and the new 3.5 won't go in. I'm not sure I will ever get the full story of the bad snapping - unless somebody else has looked into this more deeply....

Further on this saga, I have found that Logitech isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I was so pleased with the M705 now that I have some decent snapping, it took a while to realise that screen movement left a lot to be desired. The old Microsoft comfort mouse 3000 was far superior but it does not snap as well as the Logitech. This to the point where I was working in DataCad for a day with two mice. Yes, it is reasonably practical but is indeed as desperate as it sounds. It turns out that the problem was battery voltage. The 2xAA in parallel were down to 1v. The point of all this is that I received no notification of low voltage.

Hi Nick,

I have opted to go with a wired mouse - that has a very flexible and compliant cord, and I use a device they call a bungee to suspend it. This has virtually no drag, and it has super fast response and very robust buttons; that should be good for 10's of millions of clicks, at least.

https://www.datacad.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=14421&start=48

It is about $70US for the setup.

https://www.pcgamingrace.com/products/glorious-model-d-matte-black
https://www.pcgamingrace.com/products/glorious-mouse-bungee

Indeed. A couple of nights ago I was thinking "I wonder what Blanchard is driving these days..." I now recall that you have had that gear for quite some time. It had occurred to me that the M705's poor screen movement was down to it being wireless. While that's true, it's really the batteries and, now it has new ones, it seems to be fine. For all that, I wouldn't rush to get another wireless mouse.

Fresh batteries are a good thing. I have 2 good wireless mice, one with only 12-14 hours of battery life, and the other with about 28-32 hours. The best Logitech units now have much better battery life, but they are expensive. And battery life degrades over time.

The quality of the tracking, and the robustness of the buttons have gotten better over time - when you get the higher quality "gaming" mice.