>>>>Noticed the wheel on the mouse was getting a little hard to move, so I popped open the mouse to clean it out. Yikes! Pulled out clump of gunk that was piled up around the wheel mechanism, then picked out the impacted stuff in the wheel itself using tweezers. End up with a rather sizable pile of gunk...
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>>>That's why you need an optical mouse. Old wheel types were like desktop vacuum cleaners..
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>>That's old ball types - I think Naoto was talking about an optical mouse which still has the mechanical wheel.
>>
>>Nowadays these things are rather cheap - just last week I treated myself to a new keyboard and mouse, for about $10.25 altogether.
>
>Yep -- optical mouse w/ mechanical wheel. Had once tried mouse with touch slider but didn't like it for lack of tactile feedback (similarly, didn't like some brands of wheel mice because the wheel had the "smooth" movement rather than the "ridged" feel where you feel slight "ridges" when you spin the wheel).

Oh, it's a spinning wheel... beware of the thorn, princess :).