A product research tip, USB/wireless mouse for Smart TV
I'm probably "annoyingly OCD" but when I'm shopping for something I've never had before I go on a tear of making things complicated. In the past it has been socks (cotton? or human-made?). Or ball caps (baseball? trucker? poly?) On and on. Products have seemingly endless variations.
Anyway, this time it's a USB mouse. Wireless. For a "smart" tv/internet. So using the tv remote for typing one letter at a time, plus holding the remote in the air with your arm going dead was what it sounds like/tiresome.
So there was a cheap ($5) mouse and USB that worked with the tv. But the discovery was that it was cheap for a reason: It would turn off (with the switch On) after a few minutes. So. Seems easy, no?, replace it with a more expensive name brand thing? Not so easy. The big box electronics store had tons of mices with USBs from cheap to not.
I am not spoiled, detest returning things to stores. But two different products, two trips, no work-ee. I called the mouse manufacturer, MicroSoft. They told me they needed to have the "android version" number of the tv. I called the tv/Samsung. They told me they had no android version number, that I could not use a mouse with the tv. I said I have a cheap one that DOES work with it. The robot tech kept repeating the same answer multiple times.
Also, there seemed to be a detail that later became important: USB and "wireless." Some of the kid techs at the store seemed to think these two terms are interchangeable. The tv tech insisted that a wireless mouse could NOT work with this tv, that it had to have a cord. I kept repeating that the cheap one that works has no cord.
I had asked the store people why the two items (two trips) that didn't work did not say "wireless" on the boxes, which they said was irrelevant because (they said) USB meant "wireless."
So third trip/third item, I deliberately picked the HP (FIORINA long gone) that said "wireless". It WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!
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