The standard wired one doesn't use ANY battery power, does it? I dunno. I didn't know it did if it does.

I would expect it to, unless the wired mouse were very badly designed. The power to send wireless signals to everywhere within a few feet is probably more than the power required to run the mouse, which can be made pretty small.

That really depends on the mouse, but generally the drain is rather miniscule anyways. The transceiver for a wireless mouse only transmits about 3 feet or so, so the power requirements on that end are small. You could save more battery life by turning the backlight on your LCD down one notch. On the other side, I have one ever had to replace batteries in a wireless mouse once. The drain there is pretty damn small as well so one set of batteries should last you at least a couple of months. As for Tackle's claim that wireless mice are crap, I have to ask what makes/models they tried. There are some out there that *do* suck, but there are some out there that rock. The first one I got was a little wonky but the second one I got ($20 from Radio Shack!) works like a charm. If it weren't for the big old stick in my USB port, you'd think it was wired since it behaves so well.

So far I've used a Microsoft wireless mouse (a few years ago) which gave decent performance, but the rubber on the sides wore out, so I replaced it with a Logitech wireless with a nano transceiver (a tiny USB plug-in with an external surface that only sticks out about 1/8" from the computer body). The Microsoft mouse had a transceiver that was large enough that it had to be removed before packing the computer, and placing the transceiver into its storage spot on the bottom of the mouse turned off the mouse. The Logitech has the same on/off configuration if you want to use it, but since the transceiver is so tiny, I never remove it from the computer -- I haven't taken it off or shut the mouse off in over a year now, and I pack the computer and mouse home with me every night. (This is part of the intention of the nano thing.) I love this mouse. If it wears out, I'll replace it in kind. The two AAA batteries in the mouse, even though it is 'always on' (and used upwards of 12 hours per day on weekdays), last for months, and give warning plenty of time (weeks) before they run down too much. If it causes a battery drain of the laptop itself, I haven't noticed it, though I don't use the laptop battery exclusively all that often. I'd keep this configuration in any case, because it is so damn handy.