Should You Turn Off Your Cordless Laser Mouse When You Shut Down or Hibernate the Computer?

Companies look to save money and energy costs in different ways. For some, this means turning all of the lights out and every computer off each night when employees go home. For others, it means setting the computer to hibernate after a few minutes of inactivity. Perhaps surprisingly, a wireless laser mouse can interfere with computer hibernation -- although it doesn’t save power when the computers are shut down completely.

Cordless Mice

1. Cordless mice come in different shapes and sizes but have one unifying quality: they all run on batteries. When you shut down your computer (and even when you put it in sleep mode), your mouse continues to run and drain its batteries. The cost of batteries may be negligible for your office equipment budget, but the batteries in the mouse will last longer if you turn it off every time you’re not using it.

Shutting Down the Computer

1. When you shut the computer down completely, it ceases to interact with any of its peripherals, cordless or otherwise. That means that the printer, the keyboard, the network and all other factors stop affecting the behavior of your computer. To save additional energy, you have to turn each of these peripherals off, but none of them -- including your mouse -- have any bearing on the computer or its state once it’s turned off.

Hibernating

1. Hibernating your computer is different than turning it off. Your computer doesn’t shut down or close active programs, but suspends itself until you wake it up. Depending on how you’ve configured hibernation, you can use your mouse to wake the computer up. In this case, shutting off your cordless mouse will prevent the computer from coming out of hibernation prematurely. Laser mice are very sensitive, so any vibrations on your desk may cause the mouse to move, which in turn will cause the computer to wake from hibernation.

Power Options

1. You can change the devices that wake your computer from hibernation to ensure that your mouse won’t interrupt the computer’s patterns even in the event that you forget to turn it off. In Desktop View, right-click on the bottom left corner of the screen and select "Device Manager." Double-click on your mouse in the list and and uncheck the box beside “Allow this device to wake the computer,” then click “OK” to save the changes. The mouse will no longer interfere with hibernation.