I made an interesting discovery, and I thought I'd pass this along to others.

I believe this is only relevant to optical/wireless mice. My MS optical mouse seemed to eat up batteries awful fast, a set lasting 2 - 3 months. I never thought much of it because I realized that it was "on" and transmitting all the time. Even if the computer was off. Whenever I changed the batteries in it, I'd toss those batteries in a drawer. The same batteries that wouldn't operate the mouse any longer, would operate our remote controls for months.

I had one of those mousepads with the wrist-rest built in. It was made of some material that had a "sheen" to it. Like a cheap silk. I don't want to get too long-winded here, so I'll just say that the dog influenced my replacing the mousepdad. That was six months ago. To further test this "discovery" I've tried all the old batteries in the drawer, and they work fine also.

Apparently, the reflective "sheen" of the old mousepad interfered with, or made it harder to read the laser beam. In case I didn't mention, the new mousepad is a matte finish.

Hope this helps someone.
Dex