Vista Mouse Pointer Offset

Quick solution: go to Control Panel -> Mouse -> Pointers tab and on the Scheme drop down change from Windows Aero to None.

Explanation:

so you bought your new Dell, spent a lot of money on it, it's all shiny and beautiful and capable of doing the most complicated things... but your mouse doesn't work properly! The pointer keeps getting offset, so whenever you click on something it actually clicks below it.

Well, this is yet another Vista blunder. If you look into it you'll end up getting to an article in Microsoft's knowledge base which says that "Vista does not support high-performance mice". Oh, high-performance mice, what does that mean? A mouse that outperforms Windows? 

In any case, the knowledge base claims sp1 should fix it. nope, it doesn't. Then there is a hotfix for the very keen which needs to be requested, and you'll get a link on your email with a password-protected zip file which after extracting and running its content says "this hotfix does not apply to your version of windows", probably because I already have sp1 installed I'm guessing.

So I concluded that either I was on the wrong track and the problem has nothing to do with high-perform mice, or Microsoft has really hit the ground low with Vista and didn't manage to support as basic as a mouse properly. 

Then, thanks to a few people out there who shared their frustrations in many forums I found something that pointed me in the right direction, and that is the solution of turning off the Windows Aero scheme for the mouse pointer. The reason why I mentioned Dell before was because this seems to happen with a lot of the Dells since last year, probably because of the new fancy mice they're coming with which is too much for Aero to handle.

oh dear, so, is Windows 7 out yet?...