this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
403 points (97.9% liked)
Ask Lemmy
40103 readers
1215 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
As someone who had to maintain school computers I will say with certainty that I don't miss those old ball mice.
You would've liked me then. I would scrape that stuff off just as a weird stim toy type activity.
That third wheel was a bit more annoying since it was on a spring and therefore harder to scrape.
Just have to press down and scrape sideways. Optical mice rule.
Yeah, just a much lengthier process.
oh man optical mice and lcds was the best thing ever for IT. I got everyone in my family optical mice one xmass when they got pretty cheap and when people just did not realize how much a quality of life improvement they were. I think I included a mouse pad that was a good surface in case they had a desk with little contrast. Then at work I was pushing conversion to lcd and sunsetting crts so hard.
The place I worked for had the contract for all school computers in our part of the state. After two years or so of buying huge numbers of mice because the teachers couldn't be bothered to keep the kids from stealing or throwing the balls from the mice we started using epoxy to glue in the balls. The teachers immediately started complaining about the kids complaining about it. I was out of that part of IT when Optical mice became more common but I'm sure it was a great relief to those that were still maintaining that pile.
I assume your talking you glued the plastic that held the ball in the mouse because at first read it sounds like you glued the ball and im like. Yeah I bet there would be complaints :)
No we did not glue the ball. Why would anyone consider that a solution?
yeah it just sounded like it initially while reading your comment. It was sorta funny to visualize.