Mouse Tips Here's a typical mouse. Left Hand Button Of all the parts on a mouse, the left hand button gets the most work. Clicking the left hand button is used to select items and place the mouse cursor ( flashing bar l ) from spot to spot. For example, to move your mouse cursor from HERE ..... to ..... HERE you would click the left hand button on the mouse.  Right Hand Button The right hand mouse button is used to activate any available menus from whatever you click on. For example, click the right hand button of your mouse HERE Do you see the list of options pop up? The right hand button does this and you can select one of those options with your mouse pointer and click the left hand mouse button.  Scroll Wheel The scroll wheel allows you to move whatever you looking at, web page, document, or anything able to scroll up and down on your computer screen without having to move over to the scroll bars on the right hand side. You simply roll the scroll wheel up or down. Click the scroll wheel and the following icon will appear on the document at the point where the cursor was placed. The distance of the arrow above or below the centre of the icon will control the speed of a vertical scroll.  If the following icon appears, you can scroll vertically, horizontally or diagonally at a speed dependant upon the distance of the arrow from the centre of the icon. Left Click and Right Click From time to time you will hear people say "left click on ........" or "right click on ......." This simply refers to which mouse button you should use. Left click means click on something using the left hand mouse button and right click means use the right hand mouse button.  More Buttons More Wheels You can purchase mice with more than the 2 buttons and 1 wheel as illustrated. These additional wheels and buttons allow you to assign tasks or functions to the additional buttons and wheels.  Optical or Trackball Mice first used trackballs as a way in which to track and navigate where they were. The downside with trackballs is they deteriorate and become unreliable after a period of time as the ball and rollers become dirty from the oils from your hands. They do not work well on uneven or dirty surfaces. Optical mice are much more accurate, are faster, more durable and work more reliably on less than ideal surfaces. Solid coloured surfaces can sometimes cause them to malfunction. Wireless An adapter is plugged into the computer to replace the wire attached to the mouse. The mouse has a battery operated transmitter similar to a garage door opener and sends signals to the adapter on the computer. Best features are a mouse holder to recharge the batteries, auto "turn on" and "turn off" to prolong the life of the batteries, and of course, optical What's New Mice with tilting scroll wheels for horizontal scrolling, extra button to turn a magnifier "On" and "Off", enclosed laser pointers for presentations, buttons to adjust audio volume, buttons programmable to do any function you wish except wash the dishes, etc.