That's not remotely long enough for it not to be a pain to manage. Being battery-powered is my primary objection to wireless mice and keyboards.

That said, I do have a use case where the presence of cords are a larger problem than the hassle of being battery-powered and use a wireless mouse and keyboard there. But for everything else, nothing beats a cord.

I had a reasonably cheap wireless mouse back in the early 2000s which could take rechargable lithium batteries and charge them with a wire that also allowed me to use the mouse at the same time.

I'm no power user, that device lasted me years and the reason it's still not used all the time is the cable frayed and died after 10 years.

My keyboard is never further away from my machine than the length of the cable, so I see absolutely no reason to complicate things by adding batteries to the equation.

They probably require a wire to be charged.

They also lose charge when it's least convenient.

Also, cheaply available, standardized batteries don't address your e-waste concern either. So your post doesn't seem much different than someone being indignant or even sanctimonious about the wireless preference of others.

I have a Logitech mouse bought in 2009 for $40, it needs 1 AA battery which I change once a year or less. I do not understand where the modern mice dissolve their energy.

The idea is I don't care about the idea. If I forgot to charge it, or come back from holidays and it's off, I want to be able to plug in and still work.

Like with every other mouse.

Not to mention: when the charge lasts so long (2 months) it's even easier to forget to recharge it and take it for granted. Unlike something you need to charge e.g. daily or so, this is something that stays out of your mind for months on end -- until it fails.

Wow, how much do you type? Mine last more than a year.

Actually, the batteries it came with only ran out last week and I thought the keyboard itself was dead, since it happened all of a sudden after I moved apartments.

Shitty ones don't, yeah. A thing you can do with those is remove the battery fully, so it's not being recharged/used at all.

For some users, the point of a wireless mouse is to be a portable mouse. You can take it on the go with your laptop without worrying about cables. When they are at home, they don't care about cable drag, and they want the peace of mind that the mouse will always have full battery when they need to go. They leave the mouse always plugged in when they can, so they can use the mouse unplugged when they need to.

I think most modern mouses have long enough battery life now, that more people can have the peace of mind without constantly docking their mouse. If the battery lasts weeks, it feels pretty secure.

> I won’t start about how many times I’ve tried to use wireless headphones only to find them dead, because anything wireless is just another battery to worry about.

The same logic points that his _phone_ is also wireless. Maybe we should add a cord to that?

The responsibility to have the foresight to charge a device has, in my life, proven to be a small and reasonable request.

In many android cases (unsure about apple) you can even charge your head phones using your phone as a battery.

But... why? Logitech managed to build a significantly more comfortable mouse that can still be plugged in while charging. It's a nicer, more usable and practical product.

Aren't you really going out there on a severely stretched limb to defend this mouse design?

I find it rather useful with my toothbrush. While I'm very much pro environment it is not like we're talking about huge batteries here.

So even if I'm at home where I (almost) always have batteries, this still involves going downstairs, digging a couple batteries out, and swapping them. (In an office I probably wouldn't have batteries handy.)

I won't defend a rechargeable mouse you can't use while plugged in; the Logitech mouse I generally prefer lets me do this. But just swapping batteries isn't clearly better than can't use a mouse while it's charging to me. And with a laptop I'm actually fine with using the built-in trackpad 90% of the time.

But then you might have something urgent to do and cannot stop using the mouse. Then...you forget about recharging. Rinse and repeat, until you get at 0%. I know it's not a big deal but it would not have been a big deal either allowing the mouse to work and recharge via USB at the same time by not putting the port beneath it.

I've routinely harvested and repurposed the batteries and the usbc ports from many of these due to how easily discarded ones are found. What brands do you find unable to recharge?

How does that compare with NiMh, or whichever is the current standard chemistry for rechargeable AA/AAAs? I may be misguided here, but I generally avoid regular single-use AA/AAAs, as it feels like a complete waste of energy - even if properly disposed of, I don't imagine they get recharged by some factory and put back on the market, so all the embodied energy that went into making them is lost.

> For powering iPhones, you can buy a few 18650 with a type-C/lightning case from AliExpress, but most people will prefer just buying a powerbank.

At least some of the power banks I've disassembled in the past were just 18650s with a case, USB port and charging circuitry, so I can't blame people for buying it already pre-assembled.

So here's the rub, isn't it? Consumer mice from decades ago did NOT require you to check battery levels.

There's no good reason for a charging/wired port on the bottom of the mouse. It may only be a problem rarely, but it could just not be a problem AT ALL.