As with many Apple products, the Mighty Mouse is an absoute nightmare to disassemble. Normally I wouldn’t care, but the Mighty Mouse has a major design flaw that results in a non-functional trackball after a relatively short period of normal use.

There is no shortage of how-to guides for cleaning a Mighty Mouse, though most involve a knife and what appears to be permanent damage to the mouse. I’ve tried several non-destructive cleaning methods with limited success. However, I recently found success with a method loosely based of of this one.

My method requires a small motorized car and a little  surface cleaner (409, Sugar Soap, etc.).  Put a small amount of cleaner on the ball, then use the drive wheel of the car to spin the ball in several different directions for a few minutes.  In my experience, after a thorough cleaning the mouse feels as good as new.  As always, do this at your own risk, unplug the mouse before cleaning, and don’t whine if the cleaner fries your mouse.

Tags: Apple, How-to, Mighty Mouse

This story was posted on Monday, October 25th, 2010 at 1:20 and is filed under Computing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.