Aw...your mouse went through puberty.

Dude. Your mouse has hit puberty.

*turns mouse over*

Nope, I'm safe with my shaved head.

looks like the beginnings of a beautiful nest.

My PC's mouse is perfectly clean. Matbe it's an apple thing. PC FTW.

doesn't really affect usability per se, but if you have game socnsole controllers that get used, check the seam between the upper and lower shells. it gets stuffed FULL of dead skin. pretty gross, but only ever looks bad on 360 and Wii controllers.

Jesus... head hair?? are you going bald? :)

I remember the days of the roller-ball mouse, and having to pull the ball out and extract all the hair and dust that was wrapped around the little wheels inside. Eeeww.

by head do you mean the one up here or down there?

yawll need some simple green, just dont forget to delute it.

jesus, how can you use that mouse. for me, please try a vx revolution, and just thank me in 10 years when your hand still works.

Sorry no pix but I was asked to repair a person's home computer at my place of work. Opened the guy's case up to have a look and found mouse/rat droppings. I promptly closed case back up and told him that is was unrepairable.

I share a workstation at the office so I clean the keyboard, mouse and desktop with a Lysol wipe every morning. I have seen too many people come out of a stall in the bathroom and head straight for the door, passing the sink by.

WTF?!?! A little bit of my breakfast just ended up in my mouth....just a little!

@ronnsprocket:

Actually it all depends on how you grip your mouse, most professionals have wat cam be called a finger grip, and actually the apple mouse is perfect for he finger grip. im guessing you have a palm grip, hence the need for crappy logitech crappyness!! (yes i kno the mouse is probs made by logitech)

I have the old Mac keyboard at work...the white keys have developed a grey patina that gives a visual cue as to how much each key is pressed...not to mention the thing is natural crumb catcher.

I keep my desk at work pretty clean so I don't have any real issues with my mouse. My 360 controller, on the other hand, is a complete mess. I don't see myself as a dirty guy or anything crazy yet after two or three games of CoD I'm scraping all this brown gunk off of the sides, trigger, and bumpers. It's gross.

@Jakus: I'm a complete Logitech fanboy but I'll let this one pass by just saying that using the finger grip works just fine on any Logitech I've tried.

As for clean mouse and keyboard. The bottom om my mouse gets wiped almost daily just to keep it gliding smooth. Even a grain of dust under the mouse drives me nuts.
The keyboard gets the occasional wipe down and a couple of times a year I rip all the keys out, wipe and clean the insides and clean all the keys with dish soap.

I'm gonna send in pics of my old old watercooling though, that shit was nasty.

Well this why I clean my mouse, keyboard and screen once a week usually Sundays.

I'm kind of a germophobe.

Every mouse I have ever owned has done this. I always chalked it up to being of Hispanic descent and having naturally oily skin.

@Jakus:

agreed...I barely grip my mouse. Never had an issue with comfort with my mighty mouse...the sticky track ball and phantom right click are a completely different story though.

@morganlh85: Is it wrong that I secretly took immense pleasure from cleaning those little wheels?

My new OCD obsession: Cleaning the FILTH that has accumulated in the little grooves of the scroll wheel.

@morganlh85: This is why Dirty Jobs should do a bit on college computer lab admins. Even if the mice are optical nowadays you still have to contend with that layer of grayish-brown funk that students leave on everything. That and the twits who expect you to do something about the thesis they just accidentally deleted. And the guy who sits in the back corner for six hours a day who leaves stink on everything. And having to disembowl a printer because someone decided to feed it a not-for-laser-printing transparency.

I still cringe when I think of cleaning out old Logitech wedge mouse rollers with a pocket knife.

I keep my computer stuff clean, like clean room clean.

YOU CAN EAT OFF MY KEYBOARD. AND I DO.

I tend to eat at my desk and have sweaty hands, so I get brown crust build-up all over they keys of my keyboard, and on my left mouse button. If I don't scrub it all down at least once a month, it gets so gross that other people will flat-out refuse to touch it.

I also still have rollerball mouse here at work, so there's quite a bit of lint build-up inside that thing too.

Dude, that's nasty. I have the exact same set up and upon flip-inspection, not an ounce of the nasties. Get a mouse pad, for the sake of your visitors, please.

Hey Jesus, maybe if you call Swiffer they can start manufacturing disposable pads for the bottom of your mouse!

my keyboard is filled with coffee stains and the detritus of a million everything bagels. i am thinking of covertly swapping it out with someone else's keyboard and playing dumb.

I clean the bottom of mine regularly, but that supid little scroll ball on the mighty mouse gets jammed often.

Hm... I guess taking care of my gadgets ever since childhood paid off. Almost all my stuff is as clean as new, aside from the dust inside the screen of my iRiver... But that's a design flaw more than anything I can control.

And I think Opie hit the nail on the head here, haha.

ewwww I wipe my gear down daily...O and I keep my tech stuff clean too.

I might help if you son't work on the ground too.

@Dr.Danger: you can open it and clean it...just be careful not to break the tiny clips...I cleaned one of mine (I have 2)

@jetexas: You are nasty, just nasty!!!!!

my wireless mighty mouse is clean, but the scroll ball has gone belly up for the past 2 months or so. I'm too cheap to get another one so I suffer using the trackpad whenever I want to scroll down.

btw- that is just ridiculous jesus. it looks like that might mouse is attempting to sport 4 merkins

At home I have two environments: The "Den" in the basement (mine, not my parents) where I smoke, drink and snack around my desktops. THEY are completely filthy. No I won't send any photos, but picture fans clogged with nicotine and tar-stained dust-bunnies the size of bunnies, and you get the general idea. I clean off the dual screens when I can no longer tell the difference between Jesus and Nutbastard... Nothing that I really care about (lappies, camera gear, kids etc.) is even allowed down here in the first place. UPSTAIRS, the machines are all clean. Not OCD clean, but an I-can-have-guests-over-after-a-frantic-5-minutes clean.

I turned my keyboard upside down
and thereupon repented
for every substance ever found
was therein represented

I opened up my PC case
and in the cloud created
roamed creatures of a dusty race
so far evolved they'd mated

I pulled some wires to find out what
was therein lodged and smelling
I think it's called a 'Rat's Nest' but
most rats keep cleaner dwellings

The carpet makes a crunchy sound
from all the crisps I've lost
It's crusty fibres have been drowned
in Chicken Rogan Josh

My mouse's ball once slid with ease
but now it's caked in goo
I fear he has a bowel disease
and can't control his poo

I turned my keyboard upside down
And thereupon recovered
A hunk of every el'ment found
(And several undiscovered)

I am constantly fishing hairs out from between the bezel and LCD of my macbook pro. Little buggers breed there, methinks.

My Trackman doesn't have such disgusting problems.

I have an optical trackball at the office that gets random crap underneath the ball. I have no idea where it comes from since I wash my hands compulsively.

my mighty mouse gets cleaned at least twice a day, and it still gets muck all over, perhaps i should clean the desk instead?
the old style apple keyboard has just had every single key off for a really good clean!

i like keeping my tech nice and healthy

@cordsie: Nice!

I routinely spray a tiny amount of window cleaner on a paper towel and skid my mouse across it to de-gunkify the Teflon pads.

I can tell when the amount of drag changes and it becomes annoying.

That same paper towel then wipes the desk where I mouse and the whole gitup stays pretty acceptable that way.

It's called a mousepad, Jesus. You should use one. My Mighty Mouse looks NOTHING like that.

this mouse get dirty really fast, i check it out everyday to remove unwanted filth from it. Then again it won't hurt to clean your desk, the cleaner your desk is the cleaner your mouse is..

That's another reason I love my Gyration air mouse! ^_^

I use trackball, and I clean it.

I should post a picture of my boss' workstation. Imagine the bottom of your Mighty Mouse, but that gunk is covering the entire circumference of the Teflon ring, as is splattered around the topside of the mouse and desk surface where he mouses.
@TerryinSt.Paul: I think it may indeed be an Apple thing, because I only notice it on the Macs in our office and all our PCs have not a trace of it.

I haven't seen anything like that since I've had an optical mouse. I used to have to clean out the mouse balls periodically, but they never got that nasty even though I only cleaned every few months.

@LastVigilante: Ha! Another strike in favor of the fanatically clean Windows users. :)

@Seiven: Actually, I found a neat little trick without opening the mouse. If you flip the mouse over and rub it around on a piece of paper, it clears the jam and cleans the ball.

And yes, I am a certified Apple Tech...so its official :D

@Jakus: I'm on a Mac mini, typing on a mac keyboard, with my maxbook pro nearby and there is a mac mouse in the room.... in it's box on the way back to the store. That thing is embarassingly awful. I've got a logitech MX518 and it was insulting to me that apple would like me to use something completely unergonomic with fumble-button(tm) design as that mac mouse.

@TerryinSt.Paul:
Amen brother.
Ah the apple mouse, what a piece of.............engineering?

@Dr.Danger: That's a great tip. Thanks!

Where I work, users complain their mouses aren't working correctly. Pretty much look like the picture above but with less hair. The best is taking the ball out and finding an 1/8 inch gunk wrapped nastiness around the rollers. I make sure every user watches me do this making sure all of it lands on their desk. Clean your own damn mouse people!

WOW!!!

Where'd all the freaks come from?

I only use my mouse from inside a hypoallergenic suit in a cleanroom environment. !!!AND!!! if the particle levels move past 2 microns i burn down my entire city block and move to another zip code. new starts are always good!

ugh, i mean i dont have snatch-hair gumming up my mouse, but i don't think this was an invite into your fucked up worlds of anal retentive OCD, either.

Dude, buy a $10 mouse pad for your $3000 Mac, and you won't be looking at a pube magnet.

also, after further review, jetexas is a pretty gross son of a biscuit. dang, wipe your chins i think there's a day-old brisket sandwich in there.

....and a muffin? what is that? We need to walk you to a car wash.

my hands sweat a lot, but that has to be some potent stuff.

one day my dad sneezed right on the PC's screen... Imagine when I sat to use the computer and all I'd see is a blur version of Windows... Disgusting

Spanking it to internet porn gives you hairy palms.

I'm going home on my lunch break and grabbing a shot of my PS/2 compaq keyboard that's about 12 years old. Most of the keys were white at some point and are now mostly brown, various keys missing, etc.

What you guys should get pics of is take your keyboard and shake it over a piece of paper and see how much food, ash, dust, hair comes out. Maybe weigh it, have a contest for largest accumulation of crap lol.