I’ve always had troubles with the Microsoft Wireless Desktop 6000 and before it the Microsoft Wireless Desktop Elite not scrolling correctly in iTunes and more recently Picasa. The scrolling was very slow in these applications and a lot of the time seemed to not work at all. It would take frantic scrolling of the wheel to make the listings move just a couple of lines. Completely useless.

My sister is visiting for a couple of weeks and I was complaining about the issue to her when she suggested I try her notebook mouse — It worked perfectly.

The fix is actually pretty simple — change the type of mouse in the IntelliPoint Mouse Properties window to something different. I now have my Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 setup as a Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000. I simply chose this mouse because it has the same number of buttons as mine. Once it’s changed iTunes and Picasa scrolled correctly. Everything else still scrolls fine too (web pages, etc.) however I did find I needed to turn the sensitivity down a fair bit otherwise it was quite jumpy.

I had looked into this a couple of weeks ago and found a forum post that mentioned the same fix and there were a couple of other sites that linked to this Microsoft Help & Support article (or a similar one with the same basic fix) as well but when I tried changing mine to an earlier IntelliMouse Explorer and a couple of others it made no difference. So if it doesn’t work the first time keep selecting different types of mice until you find one that keeps all your buttons and works!

UPDATE

In the excitement of finally having iTunes and Picasa scrolling properly I neglected to test the solution fully. After a couple of reboots the mouse went back to its same old frustrating not-scrolling-properly ways in those programs. Even after a full reinstall of Windows (due to an unrelated matter) I still could not get the mouse to scroll properly no matter what I tried. On top of that, the keyboard has started not picking up all the letters I typed. Especially the CTRL and Question Mark keys.

The final solution? Buy Logitech.

My absolute final solution for these issues was to buy a Logitech wired keyboard and Logitech wireless mouse. I bought the Logitech G15 Keyboard and MX 1100 mouse. The mouse scrolls perfectly in every program I use it in and the keyboard does not miss letters typed or need a bulky wireless receiver sitting right next to it to make it work (completely negating the entire purpose of having it wireless I might add).

While not exactly technology-related this fix has made me very happy and solved an issue I’ve been struggling with for years so I had to share it!

I bought an Epiphone Explorer guitar almost nine years ago and quickly discovered it was near impossible to play standing up with a strap due to “neck dive”.

Neck dive is when the neck of the guitar feels heavier than the body so when you let go of the guitar and let it hang by the strap the neck droops toward the ground. This means that when you are playing it standing up you have to constantly support the weight of the guitar neck with your fretting hand to stop it falling. This makes it very difficult to move around the neck freely.

The only suggestion I could find at the time I bought the guitar was using a wide leather or suede strap so that the friction and surface area of the rough underside clung to your shirt. This didn’t help much at all and just made me feel uncomfortable with my shirt being yanked on. I ended up losing my nice leather strap at school later that year and didn’t even bother replacing it. Until now anyway…

The Fix

I’ve recently gotten back into playing guitar and figured I’d look into fixing the issue again. It turns out that the issue is caused by the improper placement of the neck strap button (I.e. the thing your strap attaches to on the guitar toward the neck). On the Epiphone it is positioned on the flat, cut-off looking bit near the neck on the side of the guitar (I.e. the area where the top “horn” would protrude from on a strat-style guitar. See photo below). Having the button here changes the centre of gravity and pivot point for the guitar when used with a strap.

(Red circles in photos show strap button locations. Original location on left, new location on right)

On the Gibson model (And some other manufacturers from what I’ve seen) this button is instead placed on the back on the guitar just below where the neck joins the body of the guitar.

Placing the button on the back-centre of the guitar not only helps the guitar balance much better, it also helps stop the strap coming off the button which would sometimes happen in the old location due to the strange angle of the surface the button is placed on.

I must admit it did feel strange drilling into my beloved guitar but it is well worth it. The guitar balances perfectly now so the neck no longer dives! If you are going to do it I’d also recommend buying some Straplok buttons to replace the originals as they will offer even more security from the strap coming off the guitar.