The continuing saga in my story. I purchased a Kensington Wireless Optical Desktop for mac. Muche better than the microsoft product. The only issue I have (and it's a big one) is that when i move the mouse the process "kernel_task" eats up to 50% of the CPU! I had a similar problem back in 10.1.5 with the HP printer drivers, so I'm going to first try to see if it is a driver problem...