Battery woes on wireless keyboard and mouse

[Sam]

Both my wife and I own the wireless Natural Multimedia keyboard and
Wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0 combo. My setup works just fine.
However, my wife's mouse seems to constantly complain about the
batteries being low. I think I can go for a month or two without any
problem. She seems to have a problem going more than a week or two.
She doesn't use her machine any more than I do. We both use the 5.0
drivers from MS. We're both using fresh batteries from the same
package.

Does anyone know what's going on? Is it a defective setup or hardware?

Thanks.

Sam

 

[Richard Urban]

Having worked in manufacturing for about 40 years I can tell you this.

Produce 50,000 portable battery powered devices. The calculated current draw
is 75 milliamps. The measured current draw, during quality assurance tests,
may be anywhere from 50 milliamps to 125 milliamps. This is due to the fact
that the common tolerance variance for many electronic components are +-
20%. Usually, the tolerances will balance each other out. But occasionally,
a device may be assembled that has a majority of components that lean toward
the plus side or the minus side. That's when things get interesting!

I also have a mouse that chews up batteries. My older son has the same mouse
and gets 2-3 times the usage on a set of batteries. It happens. If the mouse
is new, take it back for an exchange. Try again.

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard