HP USB 3 Button Optical Mouse in Retail Packaging

Recent Comments

1. 

   J. Leard @ 3:19 pm

   I bought this looking for a cheap mouse to use with my new Dell 1737 with Windows 7. It works just fine. It’s very light and there’s no mistaking that it’s a cheap mouse, but I’ve had no problems using it. The buttons are responsive, the scroll wheel feels just right, and it tracks very well, both on a mousepad and the wood grain of the table it rests on. It doesn’t conform to your hand like a high-end mouse and it doesn’t have additional button functions or sidescrolling, but for $10, all I wanted was a mouse that works. This one does, and it’s symmetrical design makes it equally useful for left-handed users.

   
2. 

   Edward Ju @ 4:44 pm

   One of my professors in college had a mantra that I wish I had kept in mind when I chose this HP USB 3 Button Optical Mouse as a replacement for my original mouse, which had died after over 4 years of service. His words of wisdom? “Never skimp on your monitor, keyboard, and mouse”. His rationale? These peripherals directly interact with your body, so you want to be able to remain comfortable as much as possible when working with these devices. A bit more money spent on a better model of keyboard, mouse and monitor will be well worth it when the potential cost on your health could be reduce or avoided altogether.

   Which brings us to this mouse. Since I was on a budget (who isn’t in this economy?), I figured a HP brand mouse can’t be that bad even if it sells for quite a bit less than a Microsoft mouse. So I grabbed one from the local Target, went home and plugged it in. The package, a very eco-friendly design that used minimum amount of packaging materials, comes with the mouse and 2 sheets – a quick start guide that’s basically 2 pictures telling you to plug the mouse in then restart the system, and a warranty/support statement printed in several languages. There was no CD, which typically comes with a driver or support software. Plug and play? Sounds good to me. So I plugged the mouse into the USB port, restarted the system, and Windows XP auto-detected the mouse and loaded the driver from its own driver library. So far so good. The shape of the mouse did not fit very comfortably in my palm, but I figured it’s a new mouse so it may take some time to adjust. Within two hours I started to feel some pain associated with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome which I used to suffer from many years ago, before I switched to the more ergonomically designed Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical. More specially, the way the mouse was shaped did not support the palm sufficiently when I had to click the buttons, which I suspect was the reason that was causing the pain.

   That was only the beginning of my woes. The next day, I turned on my PC only to find Windows XP stuck at the loading screen with the blue bar. After giving it about 8, 9 minutes and seeing nothing’s changed I hit the reset button and Windows showed me a text screen with multiple alternative booting methods including Safe Mode. I chose to Load Windows with a Previously Working Configuration and it loaded Windows successfully onto the desktop, when Windows proceeded to detect the HP mouse as if it was being plugged in for the first time and install its driver automatically. The following day, the same thing happened again – Windows was stuck on the loading screen until the system was reset and Windows was being instructed to load with the previously working configuration.

   Figuring there is some kind of problem causing a device conflict or lockup preventing Windows from loading, I went to HP’s website to see if I can find an updated driver or something in its troubleshooting knowledge base that addresses this problem. The attempt at finding a new driver proved futile, as HP’s website responded with this message when I found the mouse model and clicked on its link for Download Drivers and Software:

   “Downloads for this product are not available through this website. Please contact your local HP representative for information on the specific update methods available for this product.”

   Now let me get this straight. I bought this from a mass merchandise chain store (Target) and HP expects me to find a local HP rep and call him/her just to get a driver for this mouse? How does that even make any business sense when you can save everybody money and time by just putting the driver up on HP’s website for download, like most companies in this industry do? Maybe HP wants to create/keep more jobs locally? More power to them, then.

   Since the articles in the Troubleshooting documents were not on point for my problem (with the most recent one dating back to March 2008), I decided to call HP’s tech support line to see if I can get some real help. A gentleman with an Indian accent took my call. Luckily his accent was not too thick, so understanding what was being said was not an issue. After describing my problem to him, he asked me a few questions regarding my setup (during the process he found out he was wrong on the assumption that I was using a HP brand PC – I informed him I bought a HP brand mouse for use with a non-HP PC) and then instructed me to reboot the system and get into the BIOS setup screen.

   Let me just take a quick break right here to warn everyone… MESSING WITH YOUR PC’S BIOS IS SERIOUS BUSINESS. Don’t do it unless you know absolutely what you are doing. This is probably obvious to most people who work with a PC, but in case it is not, you are about to find out why.

   So our HP phone support guy asked me to describe to him all the choices I was seeing on the BIOS setup screen and instructed me to choose Load Optimal Performance Settings and then Exit and Save. The PC failed to detect my hard drive upon restarting (since the original settings stored in the BIOS has been altered) and the tech support rep put my call on hold while he talked with colleagues and tried to find out a way to revert back to my original settings. He asked me to further tweak the BIOS settings again but the hard drive remained invisible to the system. Finally he claimed that I can restore my BIOS settings by popping out the battery on the motherboard which would force the BIOS to revert back to its factory original settings. I informed him this is a custom-built system that has some of its components replaced/upgraded after the initial purchase, so the last working BIOS setting could be quite different from the factory original, but we seem to have a problem with communication at this point, as he was not hearing what I was trying to tell him and insisted this would be the only solution unless I’d like to talk to a Level 2 Technician (he identified him as a Level 1 Tech at this point) and pay a $59 fee for the support (for a mouse that sold for less than $15 at Target!) as the PC was not made by HP. I stood my ground and told him that I should not have to pay a $59 fee to fix a problem that was caused by him over the course of the support call for a HP product, eventually he agreed to transfer me to a Level 2 Technician.

   After being put on hold for about 12 minutes, finally someone picked up. The lady, a Level 2 Technican, was not aware of the nature of the call as our Level 1 Technician simply forwarded my call without talking to her to give her a background on what the issue was. After spending a few minutes explaining to her my predicament, I was given an unsympathetic “I am sorry sir, but we cannot give you any support on non-HP PCs”. Nevermind the fact that my PC would not have lost its access to the hard drive but for the “support” I was getting from HP. “Take care, sir”, she then hung up.

   I had to take my now not-working PC to a local mom and pop PC shop in the midst of pouring rain and pay them 40 bucks labor to get the BIOS settings fixed. After all is said and done, I did not save any money by buying a cheaper mouse. I ended up wasting time on the phone with HP tech support that failed to do their job, and an entire afternoon wasted taking my PC to a store to get it fixed. I wasted money having to pay for the repair out of my own pocket on a problem created by HP’s tech support which they refused to take responsibility for.

   In the wake of this fiasco, I ended up buying another Microsoft mouse and returning this HP mouse that’s given me nothing but trouble. Yes, the Microsoft mouse carried a higher price tag than the HP one. But the comfort and the complete lack of technical complications was more than worth it and made it a better value. Although a different model from my old trusty Wheel Mouse Optical, the Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000 ( D1T-00002 ) did not cause any lockups or tech issues like the supposedly “Plug and Play” HP mouse gave me. Best of all, it never gave my hand any pains or discomfort even after prolonged usage like the HP mouse did. Maybe this whole ordeal was a blessing in disguise after all, as I dodged a relapse in Carpal Tunnel by returning the HP mouse and spending a few extra bucks for a more ergonomically sound mouse.