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Working in PR. It’s not all parties, lunches and chasing up journalists’ lost luggage. Someone working in just that industry dropped a mouse in the post to me this week, along with a piece of specially-commissioned research designed to show how important this vitally exciting new product actually is.

‘Computer mouse overtakes partner and pet as most loyal companion’, declares the headline. Why? Well, because apparently 41% of us spend more than five hours with our computer mice, but only 32% spend that long with a partner and 15% spend that long with their pet. Probably something to do with having to work for a living, I’d guess.

Yet despite spending so long with our plastic palm buddies, 80% of mice over ‘get less than £10 worth of accessories, treats and repairs a year’. Mice repairs?? A loved one, on the other hand (no pun intended) can expect to have over £1000 spent on them, and pets £100 or more in the course of a year.

‘We lavish so little money on our mice it’s no wonder they cause frustrations - 39% of respondents got irritated by the mouse lead getting in the way and 27% were tired of having to clean the mouse balls… While some respondents find themselves shouting and screaming at their mouse (19%) or switching their computer off altogether (17%), the clever ones have traded their mouse in for a younger model (32%).’

Are we really such a nation of dunces that less than a third of us would spend £10 on a new mouse to replace a dodgy mouse before it started to drive us insane?

This entry was posted on Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Technology, Work. 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.