IntelliMouse lives again.

We got some e-mails about our previous Logitech post of people showing their love of the IntelliMouse, but someone contacted us directly asking what happened to that IntelliMouse that was used in the pictures?

Well! Good news! It's back up and running! Read on if you want to see all the gory details. As well as occasional ranting too!

Introducing our trusty gaming beast from Y2K. The IntelliMouse!

We will leave each image clickable at 4k resolution for closer inspection.

Man, the memories we had with this mouse. When the Unreal (full stop! Epic Megagames "Unreal") came out, we got to see its full glory being played on our voodoo 3500. It was a thing of beauty. And also during this time. Microsoft released the IntelliMouse which was originally to be marketed to work in conjunction with Internet Explorer. Keep in mind this was the late 90's and mice with physical balls were still a thing. This was different! It used an optical sensor. Thus, no need of popping off the cover and cleaning your balls every couple of weeks.

If you think the way we're writing this paragraph is too dirty. We think so too!

This mouse was great. We used mouse-wheel up/down for weapon swaps. Previous button for scope, forward button for grapple/teleport, and the left and right for primary and alternate weapon fire. Didn't use the middle button a whole hell of a lot because we didn't want to switch weapon mid-fight. Because of its sheer design, it was build for ambidextrous function, which after breaking my right wrist from too much masturbation. Er, smashing my wrist into the sidewalk from a skateboarding accident. I was still able to play games with my left hand just fine.

Wear safety protection! The skaters that told me safety gear is lame we found out also died of meth by the age of 30. The moar you know.

Anyhow, eventually we upgraded all of our hardware to corsair (which we regretted, but we're still using the gear despite turning off all the software behind it) But upon showing this mouse off on our previous Logitech posting we did get some e-mails asking if we still had this mouse pictured above.

Not only do we have this mouse, but we plugged it in, and it still works. Despite how clicking on the buttons feels like it's going to explode after 25 years.

 

Now because we opened this bad boy up a few times for servicing. The adhesive near the lower half of the mouse pads were for the most part gone. The model number sticker peeled away long ago on a crappy "Fellows" mouse pad with wrist support. The reason why you don't see the parts on the top not almost falling off is apparently we had an IntelliMouse 1.1 (not a 3.0 which we'll get to later) and thus the entire mouse was held in by just two screws at the bottom.

We attempted to heat-weld the plastics together, which eventually failed after a few years. So! Since the main problem of this mouse is fucked up plastics. We figured we'll do the same thing we did to our Corsair Scimitar and just buy it from AliExpress. In which, despite the mouse being this old. We were in luck as this mouse is also incredibly common!

Onwards to Aliexpress!

If there is one strength and AliExpress has over every other onsite site out there, which is their ability to tap into the Chinese market for extra plastics. This is because in many cases these are either defects that the manufacturer rejected or overstock where the manufacture ordered millions of but then stopped production mid-stream. It's super fucking wasteful but the only consolation prize is it gives us a shot at buying it.

A little bit of a PSA when it comes to AliExpress: DO NOT BUY STORAGE FROM THESE PEOPLE! Unless you want to buy a bootleg 1TB MMC card just to find out how fucked it is.

Also, be incredibly careful with your sub-selection of AliExpress. In the screenshot above you'll notice they're selling IntelliMouse 3.0 and IO1.1 and of course it defaults to the red plastics for only 4(USD). Aliexpress has a lot of dark navigation patterns where they show you a picture of what you want in the search window only to show you the actual product which is one piece of what you wanted and not the entire kit.

Take apart your mouse and determine exactly how the insides of your plastics look like to ensure you are getting the exact version! Cross-check this with the description. Because what happens next will determine you either getting your money back or getting ripped off.

This is what you get.

Serial numbers blurred to protect the guilty.

This is both awesome and wrong at the same time.

The awesome: Came with screws, pads, even a sticker with a serial number on it that totally looks legit.

The bad: Mouse wheel isn't even remotely close to an IntelliMouse IO1.1 or 3.0 edition. It's like they jammed whatever the fuck they wanted in the bottom and left it at that.

Now, we were ready to return this immediately because the description AND picture were dead wrong as to what received. So it's time to Put AliExpress's return policy to the test.

To sum everything up shortly. We were intent to send it back, but within a few days the seller just gave me a full refund. Which means it's all free (except for the time waiting for this part only to do nothing). This is mostly because the amount of money to send it from the US back to China would be astronomically higher than it is to for them to ship this to us.

Also, the paint job for the Microsoft is falling off (you'll see better in other pictures) The reason why China has so many is due to manufacturer rejection on the paint job. Fine by Me.

Now, if it was just the upper case. I could call it as the cheapest plastics repair job we've ever done, and we're back in business. As the top of whatever the hell they sent us fits perfectly on the bottom shell of our mouse. But our mouse wheel after 25 years is breaking down. The plastics feel disgusting as fuck.

We tried to remove the wheel, thinking it was like a normal tire. But after the plastics were obliterated we quickly found out that the software plastics were molded around the hub of the mouse which means if your hands were extra sweaty the wheel would expand and eventually jam in your mouse stopping it from working entirely for you.

Now, for chuckles. We did remove the outer plastics and put it back into our classic mouse shell for testing and if it were up to me. We would consider that "Good Enough" however, if we were to give this to another person. They probably wouldn't appreciate the jank ass repair.

So, back onto AliExpress to get this mouse fixed right.

More dark navigation patterns of AliExpress.

We call this tactic the "Welcome" deception. Because what they do is list an item excessively low in an attempt to beat out all other prices for the same part on Google or any other search engine that is scanning for price of an item. But If you aren't a brand-new customer, and you log back into AliExpress the price changes immediately back to $6.89(USD) which is only $2(USD) less than me buying a complete mouse kit. Thus, the markup of this part that China puts on themselves is about 200 percent versus actual cost of product. This also explains why they'll simply refund customers that call them out when they don't send the right model. On the law of averages they still make money even if they have to refund fifty percent of those orders.

New upper case, new wheel. Smooth sailing from there right S? - Anon

No. Because we found out the wheel is not anywhere nearly balanced for the mouse as well as the plastics were a few millimeters too small for the wheel. This resulted in the wheel jamming when we put the casing back together.

SO! After some careful filing, and a little bit of rotary tool sanding action to shave the extra plastics off of the wheel, bringing it back into balance. I was able to put it all together!

We shouldn't have to go through all of that. But dealing with sketchy Chinese companies is the best you can do, as there's no way in hell Microsoft will be selling you these aftermarket parts.

Because the bottom of our mouse was fairly well-preserved (thanks to us keeping those pads on the bottom at all costs). We were able to re-use the bottom plastics and transfer it over. If this was not an overstock part, the modification we would've done for the mouse pads would be to place 4mm holes in the center so that the pads can stay where they are while making it serviceable accessing the wood/plastic tapping screws underneath.

Also, as the upper plastics were brand new. A little bit of extra torque was required to ensure everything locked into place, so there was no drift from upper and lower plastics. It worried me a little because if you crank too much you shatter plastics. After a bit of back and forth working the tapping screws slowly in, we got it locked in without an issue.

Final thoughts.

Even though the wheel still looks crooked in camera view it's possibly due to the fact that the wheel itself pivots up and down to press the middle button. Despite this and the paint job (Which that can be taken care of with just a little bit of oven cleaner such as "Easy Off" which will destroy the paint without screwing up the texture like Acetone would) The mouse feels brand new once again.

This job should've only taken 5 minutes of work. But turned into an hour with all the defects in the plastics. So we would say we barely pulled success out of the hands of defeat on this one. However, it demonstrates something that Logitech was trying to prove and failing horribly at doing. That a mouse doesn't really need a subscription based software support system. Or a pay-to-play system that is designed to promote more products while consuming more resources and offering less value. That a mouse can be a lifetime product if a company allows the mouse to be repaired. It's just that simple.

Now, we could've taken this a step further by replacing the cable with a braided cable. Replacing all the switches. But this sends a $7 repair into the $12-18 dollar arena with more added time at the soldering station. And besides, all of the switches despite some of the gaming this thing has endured still feel and work great. Which was more then what we could say for any of our Corsair mice where we had to replace all of the switches in 6 months time. Or Razer where the cables would fail.

That's it for our repair journey. At the end of it all. for $7-8(USD) and a lot of headaches. The IntelliMouse lives again which we will probably put into our laptop bag for on-the-go usage.

Until next time. That's what server said.

END OF LINE+++