Hairy Cats and mice and FreeBSD

[bobmc]

Bob wrote:
>  
> Hi:
>
> I Live with a very hairy, large, Main Coon cat called Tania; she sheds
> tons of fine hair all over the place. She is a Mouser, and proudly rids
> our home (a boat) of all sorts of mice. Unfortunately she also kills
> Computer mice! Therein lies my problem.
>
> I have been replacing mechanical mice at the rate of one per month, by
> just going to the local radio shack and buying one of their cheapest
> PS2 mice, and replacing the hair-locked-up one.
>
> Recently. RS has cheapened their mouse design, so the inner rollers are
> now about 1/2 the diameter of the old ones. This "modification" has
> limited a mouse's life here to about one week!
>  
> What I want to do is replace this mechanical mouse with an optical
> mouse. RadioShack sells one, with the proper Windowz driver. I am
> running  FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p10 #2 however! 
>  
> If I go to Radio Shack, and buy their optical mouse, will I be able to
> configure it to work with my KDE/FreeBSD system? This device is not
> cheap! 
>  
> Anyone with experience using their optical mouse under FreeBSD? All
> input will be very much appreciated.
>  
> Mouse-less on the Atlantic
> Bob
>
>   
I have a Microsoft Optical Intellimouse for PS/2 or USB.  It works fine
except for the scroll-wheel. But I have not got around to configuring
X to make it work. I doubt if FreeBSD cares which mouse you have.

The mouse has a tiny hole in the bottom which gathers hair. It can be
removed with a puff of breath.  I also use a mechanical keyboard which
can be cleaned.  Don't bother trying to clean hairballs from these
rubber-mat keyboards.

Oh, the mouse is listed at $31.99 on tigerdirect.ca

-BobMc-