How to Clean Your Mighty Mouse

Can the scroll ball be cleaned with alcohol or is that a no-no?

MM sucks.. and can they please drop the term Mighty - it's embarrassing. I'm using a 5 year old Optical IntelliMouse Explorer which with 5 buttons (Expose x2, Dashboard, left and right not to mention scroll wheel and only about £8 nowdays and far far better - it also fits a human hand nicely if you're over 12 years of age. I've never had to clean it other than to wipe the base off occasionally.

Plus Apple is taking far far too long to make a wireless version of a multi button mouse. I know they're busy with the Intel transition - but are you telling me they don't have a seperate 'Mouse/KB/human interface' department - who are blantently sat on their arses right now...

Good point Brendan. I'm on my third Mighty Mouse in six months. When MM works, i.e. when it's new, it's great. Once the scroll starts to misbehave you just wanna throw it out of the window. Can't wait until Apple gets round to redesigning its mouse. Until then, any suggestions for a good alternative?

My Mighty Mouse rawks.

I am on my third Mighty Mouse now.. all dodgy scroll balls (suddenly stopping scrolling down) - although this one seems to be working! It is not a major issue anyway - one quick call to apple and a new one lands on my doorstep the very next day... so if your scroll ball stops working.. remember you have a year guarantee - apple will send you a new one immediately.. thank goodness ;-)

Compressed air!

Being too lazy to dismantle my MM which had quit scrolling, I decided to see if the can of compressed air that I use for cleaning negatives and slides before scanning would work. I held the MM upside down, pressed the little tube down all around the ball while blowing air into it. It took a couple of tries but the mouse now works like new again.

yeah i cant go down, it drives me mad. the most important direction and it doesnt work. i love the mouse but i think ill stay away from apple mice from now on.

OR.... Apple could design a better Mighty mouse - with an invisible scroll sensor built-in under the shell. So when you stroke the mouse scrolling just happens!

this is not cleaning method what we really need. if you're not stupid, you already know how to clean. but it's not the point. the point is how to clean track ball inside mouse shell. so you need to take a part. I did it several times. it's easy.

When it works, I like my MM. But the scroll ball gets clogged every few weeks and requires some tough love to get it working again. Near as I can tell, it has a mechanical scroll ball, not optical, which is...disappointing. Either Apple should make it optical or make it user-serviceable (or better yet, both).