h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have a cordless mouse. There's a bad connection inside. In the middle of doing something, it just quits working. It started some time ago if I wasn't careful and tapped or cracked the thing. Now, I'm very careful to only slide it around, but it still just give up on its own.
How do I open it? The warranty is up and the tech people will surely charge more than a new one to fix it.

You can't, they snap and glue them together. The only way to open them is to pry at it with a screwdriver. If you do manage to get it open then you'll have to glue it back together and you'll have the devil's own time getting the side buttons back in to the right place. Oh and the flexible PCBs which connect all the bits together are extremely fragile and can be torn very easily.

I'd recommend getting a replacement mouse, and excuse the following blasphemy but, the M$ ones are actually very good and, aside from having a scroll wheel and not a scroll ball, are generally superior to the Apple ones. For instance they have, including the scroll wheel, 5 buttons rather than the 4 that the apple mice have.

Thanks, T.B. for your answer. It wasn't what I hoped for, but it was what I expected. My mouse has quit three times since I last posted. Since I have resigned myself to getting a new one, I have become quite stern with the one I have. Smacking it really hard on the desk relieves some of my frustration and it actually makes it go again, sometimes.
Thanks again for the info.

You may not have to take it apart. When my Apple wireless mouse went bad, it turned out that the repair was very simple. If you open the battery compartment, there's a piece of metal on the inside of the plastic part that lifts off. Mine had come loose, and since that's what makes the battery contact it meant that when it jiggled too much the mouse would go out.

A little spot of glue fixed it up, no problems since. Glue was actually my second repair, I started with a piece of tape but that only worked until the tape lost its stickiness.

Thanks dEl for that. The metal strip is bent back in order to press the switch located just below the laser window. I used the edge of a knife to open the metal bend a bit so it pressed the switch a bit farther and that worked for a couple of months. Now, even when I press the switch directly with my finger, it still does not always make. That's how I know the trouble is inside.

I notice too that the mouse works fine every morning when I start up and fails after an hour or so. I leave it and come back later and it's OK, for about an hour. I think the heat of my hand is affecting something inside.

Assuming that it's battery-driven and rechargable, try wiggling the mouse and clicking the button for an hour or so, say while you watch TV, with the computer off and then starting the computer. If the fault manifests immediately it's in the mouse (I would suspect failing battery voltage) while if it still takes an hour to appear it's in the computer.

Thanks Peet, that was a good idea. I already knew it wasn't the battery since there was no low voltage warning from the computer and changing batteries didn't help. Carrying the mouse around with the computer off and warm in my hand for some time kept it non functional.

Oh well, time for a new mouse.