We all know how to use a computer mouse because nowadays it has become something very normal and even an everyday activity, part of our routine. But very few people know or want to know how a computer mouse works. I mean what are all the inside parts of a computer mouse and what is the role of every one of them. The ones who do know have technical knowledge and skills. However, there are some people who are curious enough to search for the answer to their questions, but have no technical information and knowledge. The best explanation for this category of people is the picture. Of course, I don't take out all the components of my computer mouse just to see what's inside. Besides, even if I did that, I wouldn't know how to put them back in their place. So the next best thing to do is search for a computer mouse diagram over the internet. I found some, with the necessary information written on the diagram and I want to share this with you:

This computer mouse diagram is the most simple one I found and it presents the position and functions of the three usual mouse buttons. Most computer mice look like this, with the three buttons positioned in the front part of the computer mouse and the area for leaning your palm on in the middle and at the back of the mouse. So, as you can see in the diagram, the left mouse button is positioned on the left of the mouse and is used for clicking with the purpose of moving the mouse cursor on the computer screen. You can perform four different commands by using the left click button. The first one is to point, that is to move the mouse in order to make the pointer move on the screen. The second command is to click: if the mouse cursor is in the place you want it to be, click and let go and the click will perform your command. The third command is "click and drag" - you can use it to move things on the screen from one place to another; just simply move the cursor in the right place, click on it , hold the button pressed and at the same time move the cursor around the screen until you get to the point where you want to move that particular item. Then release the button and the work is done. The last command of this left mouse button is "double click" - you perform the same movement as is click, but do it twice and without a pause between the clicks. Double click allows you to open files or play certain films and so on. The right mouse button is on the right front side of the mouse and when you use the right click this opens a window with the other menus you can choose from: copy, cut, paste, refresh, arrange icons by, new, print, create shortcut, add to favourites, according to the page or document opened when you right click. Of course, between the two buttons there is the scroll wheel used to navigate more easily and faster through web pages. You can use the keyboard arrows to do that, too, but it takes a longer time and it can be tiring after prolonged use. Sometimes the scroll wheel can be used to zoom in or out certain images ; it depends on the web page that you browse or the operating system used.  It is basic information and a very clear and short mouse diagram.

The second diagram shows the inside structure and components of a computer mouse (actually the model in the picture is a ball computer mouse). It shows the principle according to which the ball mouse functions. You can see the roller ball that rolls when you move the computer mouse. The roller ball is covered with rubber in order to smooth its moves and it is placed on a support wheel and two shafts. According to your movements, the ball rolls in a certain direction and activates the two shafts and, as a consequence, the horizontal wheel or the vertical wheel inside the mouse. They allow the translation of these movements into movements of the cursor on the computer screen. This is made possible by the infrared signals sent by the LED and received by a  light detector. You can also see the slots of the wheels and the switch on top of the mouse. Of course, not all computer mice have one present. Another component of this particular mouse is the connecting cable, that connects the computer mouse to the central unit of the computer, allowing the signals to be sent and received thus enabling the commands you give to be performed. Again, not all computer mice have a connecting cable; some of them work just as fine as wireless computer mice, sending the signals through infrared light or laser to a receiver that is connected to the central unit of the computer.



The third computer mouse diagram I present to you is a particular case and it presents the process of configuring the Logitech MX Revolution mouse. This model is supposed to be the most advanced mouse in the world, or so the Logitech company claims it. This mouse has a lot of buttons, indeed, all with different functions: the main scroll wheel, functioning as any normal scroll wheel on any computer mouse. The different thing about it is the presence of the thumb scroll wheel, that can be used for other purposes or even reprogrammed to do back and forth movements between web pages. Then there's the one touch search button and the back/forward buttons, also reprogrammable do perform whatever functions you may want.



This is a very simple and valuable diagram of a mechanical computer mouse. It presents in a simple manner and at the same time in a descriptive way the functioning of a mechanical mouse allowing you to see both the plastic outside shell of the computer mouse and the tiny inside component parts that enable its proper functioning. First step: when you move the mouse, the ball moves, too. Th second step: X and Y rollers hold the ball and allow the movement transfer. Step 3: the optical encode the movements and send the signals through the light holes. Step 4: infrared LEDs send light signals through the disks. Step 5: the light sensors receive the signals sent and reconvert the X and Y movements into cursor movements. Simple and imaginative at the same time. This diagram helps you understand the inside parts and functioning of a computer mouse.



The last diagram I found is a more complex one, even if it practically presents the same things: a more detailed description of the inner parts of a computer mouse. If you do not have a great imagination, this diagram is perfect for you. It describes in detail and in separate drawings the exact positioning and components of the computer mouse parts. Actually this diagram is made as a design for a prototype computer mouse in the early days of the computer industry designed by Douglas Dayton.

Kids like stories a lot. Especially the ones where some amazing character does some magic and makes your wish come true. Don't we all? Even now, when I am no longer a child, I still love the stories with the goldfish who is rescued and in exchange makes three or only one wish come true. Do I believe in magic? No, I simply like this story because it reminds me of my childhood years and of the happiness we found in every simple thing, like a story with a talking fish. That is why I couldn't become a fisherman: I just couldn't catch the fish and kill them. I wanted to talk to them, to swim next to them. I like fish: both as an animal ans as a meal. That is why I would like to get a special present for my birthday. You guessed: a fish. But not any kind of fish, a goldfish.

And my friends found just the present I was looking for: a goldfish computer mouse. Isn't it lovely? I want to look at it and treat it like my pet, not use it when I'm writing my articles. It's gold, actually a little orange, but I like it very much. It's smooth and shiny and the sleek design just impressed me. They surely did how to make the track ball look like the eye of the fish.As you can see from the picture, it's a cord track ball mouse, easy to use and very funny. It can be the perfect gift for a fisherman or for a person whose zodiac sign is Pisces. It lights up your desk and makes the rigid atmosphere at the office relax and unwind. It brings the sunshine on your desk and a smile on your lips. If you like it and you are interested purchasing it , you can do that by going to www.patsaysnow.com and order it .

These little creatures are fish; mice fish or fish mice? How am I supposed to call them? Goldfish computer mice, or mouses (both plural forms are accepted). Anyway, you understood that I'm talking about computer mice in the shape of goldfish. They are tiny and sweet but very professional computer devices. They are promotional 3D computer mice. This kind of mouse is compatible with all versions of Windows, but not other operating systems. Its resolution is 800 dots per inch or below, has a USB interface, but it can also be used with a PS/2, U+P ports. You can order such a computer mouse in one of these colours: blue, black, red and yellow. It also has an optical sensor incorporated, so it is an optical computer mouse. it can be operated with both hands, so a godsend to lefties, who rarely find a computer mouse they can use, too. Even if its shape is not ergonomically designed, it offers a comfortable position for your fingers and your palm, so they do not go numb after a long use. Nobody complained of injuries to their wrist, either.

The scroll is on top of it, so it's very easy to scroll up and down a page or browse the web sites looking for a particular thing. The design of this computer mouse is quite unusual, but interesting. The mouse buttons that perform the right click and left click operations are actually disguised as eyes for the fish, whereas the scroll wheel is the nose. I haven't seen the nose of a fish before, but it looks cute. Because it is supposed to be a gift (the web site in case is specialized in gifts) you have the opportunity to choose the packing method: gift box, blister, tin box, white box, customize.

So this is my story with the gold fish and the true story of two different models of gold fish computer mice that I tried to present as accurately as possible and also in quite  a nice manner. use these funny computer mice and never loose hope: who knows? maybe one day you will meet the magic and talking gold fish that can make your dreams come true. Just make sure you decide what is your biggest wish until then. Because if the gold fish does not come, maybe you will work on that wish by yourself. Good luck!

The holiday season is coming and I know for sure that all the people in the world want to decorate their houses for Christmas so they could look fabulous. Traditional decorations are nice, but people want more and more every year. That is why many have thought about decorating their computers, too, because they are part of the house, right? The monitor is pretty easy to decorate, using some tinsel around it, and so is the mouse pad. But what about the dear old computer mouse? How do we decorate it for Christmas so that it can look really festive?

Don't worry, you are not the first to think about it: some people had the same idea and they have already put it into practice. So now you can purchase a computer mouse with a special festive design - it's called The White Christmas mouse. It was hand-painted and sparkle varnished and it's white, as the name hints. Wait, there's more: it was decorated with a nice white ribbon and a bunch of white berries on top of it. It looks really nice and you can even use it as a Christmas tree decoration, but I can't see how you could possibly use it on your computer with all the decorations and stuff attached to it. Anyway, if there are any people willing to buy it, search the internet at gadgets-reviews.com.

I have another great idea: why don't you decorate your computer mouse yourself? You don't have to put tinsel or berries or I don't know what other stuff attached to it that could prevent you from using it. But you could use some nice Christmas stickers. Try to find some nice stickers that really stick because otherwise they will be half detached from your mouse, both unaesthetic and uncomfortable. Then you can use some permanent markers. I advise you to use silver ones as they look good on any kind of mouse colour. Make sure you don't use Markers that are in vivid colours or even black markers that are not permanent because the colour gets on your clothes and hands. Another idea is to glue some very thin tinsel around the base of your computer mouse to make it look festive but still usable. If your mouse has a cord you are fortunate: wrap some silver or gold tinsel around the cord and it will look spectacular. You don't need to exaggerate, just add some festive features to your computer and mouse.


But if there aren't many ways in which you can decorate a computer mouse, there certainly are a lot of ways to turn your old computer mouse into a Christmas decoration. As you can see in the picture below you can use some pieces of fabric to cut the moustache and the beard and also use something round for the eyes. Then glue all the pieces together on your old computer mouse and add a Santa cap on and here's your Santa Mouse, ready to be hung in the tree. Coloured computer mice usually used by children are also the first to be broken by them. Don't throw them away when they are broken! Keep them and use them as decorations for your Christmas tree.



How about a special decoration for the door of a computer enthusiast? It is a little strange, but it looks a lot like a real one. And it is cheap, too. Just look through the unused or broken computer parts and you will find enough components for a nice Christmas decoration. Put them all together and connect them with an electric cord or string, add some small light bulbs and there it is: a real work of art. Don't worry if it will not be appreciated by everybody or if people will look at it (and at you) a little strangely. It's yours, it's hand made and it represents you. What else can you ask for?



But computer mouse decorations are not connected only with Christmas an the specific decorations for this season. You may choose to decorate your mouse whenever you want to, with no particular reason. You may want to change its cover with a more colourful one or maybe you want some more radical changes. Then you have the opportunity to choose something really special for your computer : purchase a decorative mouse. You have no idea just how special that is.  It's about a mouse manufactured in China that has a souvenir inside: a real insect or flower that is preserved in a natural resin called amber. In order to enjoy that special gift you have to see it and let other people see it, too. So the cover of this charm is made of transparent acrylic resin.All this is incorporated in a transparent body of a computer mouse and can be the perfect unique gift for somebody or for yourself. The producing company offers over 800 kinds of design and 20 kinds of things included in it: flowers, insects, clover, shell, starfish, scorpion). The insects inside the resin are real, so if you have any issues concerning this, don't order the gift mouse. But otherwise a unique decoration, indeed.

Do you remember those films and pictures of lab mice that had to find their way out of a maze in order to get to the cheese?I remember I felt sorry for them. First of all they couldn't see through walls or have a general view of the maze from above, like we do, so they couldn't use their logic like as they were expected to by lab technicians and scientist. If you think of it I couldn't stand a chance if I were in a huge maze, I or any other person wouldn't find the cheese. I would do exactly what the mouse did (and the mouse was really motivated by the reward, especially as it was really hungry): I would go ahead by chance and if my motivation were strong enough, I would memorize the way out.

Any way I don't know if the experiments with lab mice were ever successful, but I know I was fascinated by mazes ever since I was a little girl. I used to find them printed in children magazines and I had to find the right way out of the maze and colour it with my pencil.

A long time after that, when I grew up, I met the same maze, but this time designed for children (and why not grown ups sometimes) to play on computers, using the computer mouse. Some of these computer mouse mazes were really simple, some others were pretty difficult, so I realized they were structured just like any other computer games according to the degree of difficulty: from easy for beginners, to medium for normal players to very difficult for experienced players. The last levels of the maze were so hard to solve, that I was angry sometimes, but at the same time that was a challenge for me and I played the game until I finished that level, too, full of satisfaction.

The specialists say that these kinds of games have a beneficial effect on children playing them because they develop the children's logical thinking, make them think of the next move and its consequences and also develop their skills, as you need hand dexterity to finish the games. It also develops hand-eye coordination, because you have to move the mouse and at the same time look at the screen to follow the right path. So these kind of games are beneficial for children and help their brain develop.

You can find most of these games online and allowing you or your kids to play for free. They have different levels of difficulty, usually every level has a different background or setting.

Surfnetkids.com allows you to play Mouse 1.0 online. This is a computer mouse maze arcade game and your job is to guide the mouse cursor through a maze (not always a conventional one, sometimes it may appear as a path ) from one spot to another - from the green spot to the white spot which is the end of the maze. When you pass from an easier level to a more difficult one you have to face different obstacles and avoid them in order to finish the level. If you fail one level, you have the possibility to retry only that level; you don't have to start from level one all over again.

www.220.ro offers a very nicely designed maze, called Mouze Maze. The game design is impeccable and there are a lot of levels. It is addictive and you can't quit unless you have finished all the levels, even if it takes you a whole day to do that. The cursor appears as a sparkle on the screen and you have to guide it from one end of the maze to the other. The maze looks like the inside part of a machine with pistons moving all around, staying in your way to prevent you from finishing the level. There are also a lot of screw and wheels spinning all around and the game design is metalic, so you feel like you are trapped inside an evil machinery. I think a track ball mouse would be the perfect tool for playing this game, because it requires a lot of accuracy and skill. I really like it.

Maze magic 1.0 can be downloaded from www.software.informer.com and is maze worksheet creator. So now, instead of playing the maze, you can create one of your own or for your kid. You are just a few click away from an incredible opportunity of creating mazes using different settings and options, colours and even animation. There are over 1-- pre-made maze templates to choose from including shapes, numbers and more. Then you choose your own graphics, colours and line styles. When you finish all this enjoy playing the maze together with your child.



Maze 1.1 can be downloaded for free at www.giveawayoftheday.com. It is very simple and yet attractive, as a computer mouse maze should be. You have to mouse the mouse so that you guide the red dot to the yellow star through a maze. The mazes are generated randomly, but you can choose the size of the maze you want to play according to your skills. Children simply love it.

Mirrored Maze 3 can be played online on www.allfreegames.eu. It's the most amazing mouse maze game I have ever seen. It does not have anything spectacular and different from other maze games, except the one feature that gives its name: it's mirrored. That is you can see two mazes on the screen, which are a mirror to each other, I mean one is the other upside down. It's the same with your mouse cursor. You see it twice: a black arrow and a white arrow. And the point is to get both arrows at the end of the maze. The trick here is to follow only one cursor with your eyes and to be very accurate with your moves. It's puzzling when you try to watch both cursors going through both mazes and you need all the focus in the world to finish the most difficult levels.



Most of the maze games that you find on the specialized web sites must be played using the keyboard arrows keys, but if you look close enough you will find some other maze games designed especially for the computer mouse. O if you don't find one, design one yourself. It's fun and entertaining.

Our lives are so busy nowadays trying to have a normal life between work and home, between business and family. Sometimes I am afraid I might be lost somewhere on the way between the two. So I try to make my existence as pleasant and nice as possible. And sometimes happiness lies in details, in the little things that surround us. We try to build a corner of our own at the office, a kind of piece of home at work. We choose a different colour for the computer mouse pad, for example. My pad is pink with little red hearts, for example. And every time I lay my eyes on it , I smile. So a little unimportant thing like this one makes my day a little happier.

But you can do better than that: you can choose a mouse pad that is nice, happy, different and also ergonomic. The best choice for you is the gel mouse pad, highly recommended by users and doctors because it is made of silicone gel and it is very comfortable for your wrist. There are a lot of mouse pads that have a wrist rest incorporated or detachable, but not all of them are made of gel. Why is it different from the others? Because the gel can take the form of your palm, of your wrist in a natural way. In comparison, the other wrist rests are made of rubber or other hard materials that only support the wrist and do not protect it so much. And of course, after a long time of using your mouse that stays on a wrist rest you will still feel some discomfort in the wrist. But when you use the gel mouse pad it's different: it's a real protection for your wrist and it's soft and comfortable. I think it's the most ergonomic mouse pad ever invented.

There are many types of gel mouse pads and they differ in the material used to cover them. I think the best ones are those that are covered in fabric because it offers greater adherence for the mouse. Some people have complained that the gel mouse pads that are covered in plastic cause the mouse to slip on them and this way the cursor jumps on the screen in an uncontrollable way. They may be good-looking but they are not so great. It also depends on the place where the gel mouse pad was made. Most of the computer mouse pads in the world are made in China or Taiwan and are very cheap. But the small price backfires on you because of the poor quality of the product. So you'd better purchase a more expensive gel mouse pad that is made in USA or any other country. And the price is relative: how much can a real mouse pad cost? It's only a mouse pad, after all.

The gel mouse pads can also differ in size and design. You may choose from many models that are displayed on the web sites of the producers and even obtain personalized ones. For example in the model below you can see through the wrist rest as it is filled with transparent gel. The picture above shows a cushion filled with gel, too, but this time it is not transparent, is covered with fabric and the wrist rest is longer and has a more ergonomic shape.

The Belkin gel mouse pads are a little bit more sober, less coloured and more appropriate for office use. The WaveRest gel mouse pad from Dell is very comfortable and good quality for a reasonable price. KENSINGTON KENSINGTON DUO GEL MOUSE PAD is somewhat different in shape, that is it's made up of two connected parts linked in the middle by a more narrow part. This is the place where your wrist will stay. The most interesting thing about this mouse pad is the fact that you can actually fold it, put it in your bag, briefcase or even in your pocket and use it at home as well as in your office. When you unfold it back you can't see any wrinkles or lines, so it keeps its perfect shape intact.

World Champion mouse pad is a little more round and wider than the others and also has a specific blue colour.

In my opinion color is not that important, but there are some people who care a lot. I also think you should buy the right mouse pad for you, the one that suits you best, even if it may seem like a simple and small thing. I admit it's not vital, but it's important for the health of your wrist and hand. That is why my opinion is that you should buy your gel mouse pad directly from the store, where you can try it, feel it, touch it and see if it's ok. When you purchase it from the internet you can't do all these things. So avoid injuries caused by a long activity on your computer and purchase an ergonomic gel mouse pad.