bluetooth mouse battery life

Hello Obi:

Who is the manufacturer of your mouse? Apple's mouse automatically goes to a low power mode after a brief period of non-use.

Personally, I use rechargeable batteries.

Barry

Hello Obi:

With Lithium batteries the mouse ran about four months without changing. With rechargeable batteries, the time is shorter, perhaps half (I have not really checked). I never turn the mouse off. The computer with the wireless mouse is used about an hour a day.

Barry

Hi Yann,

I think that 3-4 months on a set of batteries for a wireless mouse is within the range of normal. What size are the batteries? AA? AAA?

I had a wireless Logitech trackball and its pair of AAs would last at least 6 months. I have a wireless BenQ M310 and its pair of smaller capacity AAAs would last more like 2+ months. I've just received a RadTech/BlueTake BT500 bluetooth mouse which also uses a pair of the smaller capacity AAAs, and I therefore expect battery life similar to that of the BenQ.

While both the BenQ and RadTech seem to have a 'sleep' function, a nice feature of the RadTech/BlueTake BT500 is an on/off switch, which should help further with battery life.

best of luck,
...ben

Yeah, rechargable batteries are the way to go. Obviously it doesnt matter how long you leave stuff on for... and over time it will save some $£$.

I have to replace my batteries every 2-3 weeks. And that is not replacing them when my mac tells me I should. I wait until the mouse dies and then I replace the batteries. This is getting really agravating and I am thinking of switching back to a corded mouse. I could buy many mice for the amount I am spending in batteries.

Hello Adam:

As a future suggestion, post a question or issue as a new topic. By 'hijacking' an old thread, you limit your readership.

Note my previous post about rechargeable batteries. I use an Energizer recharger that only takes 15 minutes to bring the batteries to full charge. The life is, of course, dependent on usage.

Barry

I had the same issue with an iMac G5 1.8GHz (first revision). The Apple Wireless Mouse battery would die rather quickly. Now I'm using the same mouse with an iMac G5 iSight and the battery lasts way longer. As a matter of fact I am still on the first set of rechargeable batteries and still have 3 green bars, and I have been using it for 25 days or so (which I believe is more than I used to get out of a charge). I guess the original iMac G5 drives bluetooth in a way that runs the batteries down rather quickly.

Perhaps this have something to do with the bluetooth 2.0+EDR version in the iMac G5 iSight, which probably makes the mouse work less hard. That's just my guess.

By the way, I also always leave the wireless keyboard and mouse on all the time. Keyboard has always enjoyed a long battery life.

I should also mention that I use NiMH rechargeable batteries. For people familiar with these, they should know that they lose charge every day (slowly but surely) even when they are not being used. So, getting the battery time I'm getting out of a charge is rather remarkable.

I understand Adam your frustration. Please consider using rechargeable batteries in your case so you don't have to go back to a corded mouse.


My 2 cents

iMac G5 20 250GB HD 512MB RAM BT KB & Mouse AP

I have been lucky to get a month out of my Apple wireless mouse batteries, and that is with lithium aa cells. The last pair I installed lasted 10 minutes, although I suppose it is always possible that I re-installed bad batteries by mistake. I don't think so, but it could happen. I used the iMac chat support option, and then I ordered a replacement mouse.

My keyboard batteries, on the other hand, last a very long time--I have only changed the keyboard batteries once in a year. I don't understand why there should be a difference between the keyboard and mouse in this regard. I hope that replacing the mouse will solve the problem.