Breck Fontaine wrote:

Hello,

I was just wondering if someone had an answer to this. I bought a
Labtec optical/wireless mouse (M/N:M-RAD92). My question is about the
battery life of the two AAA batteries inside the mouse. It seems that
I cannot turn the mouse off when not in use. The red optical light is
always on. Is this normal for all wireless/optical mice? Any help
would be appreciated. I contacted Labtec but no reply back. I also
checked their faqs but no information there either.

Thanks!

The red light needs to be on because this is the only way the mouse can
detect movement. It would be unpractical to have an on/off switch because
you would forget it's off each time you try to use it.

I agree that when the computer is turned off it "should" power down the LED
but the problem is that the mouse only has one way communication to the
computer so it can't tell if the machine is on or not.

In short this is common behaviour for wireless optical mice, use
rechargables (most wireless optical mice came with them I thought) and you
should see weeks between charges (the LED is bright but dims slightly when
the mouse isn't being used and doesn't actually draw that much power).

If it makes you feel better then wireless mechanical mice had/have the same
problem, internally there are two (much smaller) LED's on the optical
encoder wheels. My old logitec mechanical wireless mouse ran for many
months on a single set of batteries