Yeah, hated boiling the eggs every week or so.

Those balls were usually steel ball bearings with a synthetic rubber wrapped around it. They gave the entire mouse some weight which made the mouse feel better to use. You could clean them with something like soap, but you'd have to be careful not to use anything that messed up the rubber. Some people cleaned them wrong, which caused the rubber to become more sticky and thus get dirty sooner. You'd also risk the rubber becoming harder and not sticky enough, so they would slip a lot. They were basically a pain in the ass and I'm happy we've moved on from that.

I loved breaking the little dust rolls wrapped around the direction shafts

My first job was IT Assistant at a manufacturing company. I spent at least 50% of my time cleaning mice.

I do. When modern mouses stop working, I feel useless.

These balls were so satisfying to handle.

Never washed the ball. I did clean out the runners inside though. They hid away dead skin grime and pet fur better than any keyboard ever will.

Edit: I give my work keyboard a tip and tap once a week or so and have been asked why I do it. I explained it's basically a hygeine thing, explaining why, and was told it's disgusting. Encouraged colleagues to do it and they were mortified with the mess left on their desks. It was like they just dealt with the consequences of opening up their car engine after neglecting to oil change for 150,000 miles.

WHO'S DISGUSTING NOW????

They can try take the high road, but I've seen how many icons are on their desktops, so I basically know how messy their bedroom floor is.

You all are making me feel ancient.

Now let’s talk about losing the ball and having to fish it out from under the fridge.

I use a trackball and clean mine every few days. It just takes a quick swipe of the rollers though no soap or anything crazy.

The image doesn't show the fingernail scrape technique on the wheels that the ball drives. That cotton swap isn't going to get that off you need some elbow grease and a fingernail!

I have a trackball. I still clean it once a week. I've never washed the ball itself though. Maybe roll it across my shirt. I just take a pencil eraser to the rollers in the ball cavity.

There's no mouse I'd rather have. Being a Mac user, I mean, almost every mouse is better than Apple's. I'm not even talking about the charging port on the bottom. Charge it at night when you're not using it, it doesn't matter. It's just ugly and looks uncomfortable to use. Now the Magic Trackpad... yeah, I could get used to that. But I'd rather have my trackball when precision matters.

Well, I still use trackball mice for my day job sooo.

Although I didn't wipe the balls because it'll get rid of my sweet sweet skin oil buildup.

Did anyone actually clean their mice like this?

Btw, why was there a ball, not just a horizontal and vertical wheely on the base?

If you had cats these things were like satans gonads

Scratch blow close 9/10. (With a personal mouse. Computer lab mice had clearly seen some things and needed the alcohol.)

IT support in some cube-hell tower.

Waiting for a program to install/update, grab a pencil and break the gunk and hair off the rollers.

Ball-mice were awesome for 180 turns in FPS games too, the mouse-flick was a quality move.

Modern equivalent is having to hunt a stray hair out of the sensor hole.

What? No velcro mouse ball to clean the wheels?