TECH: Do trackballs wear out?

[Gayle Hodur <ghodur@REDSHIFT.COM>]

My Mac Powerbook is several years old. I've taken extremely good care of
it, and I clean the trackball on a fairly regular basis. Lately, though, it
seems to be getting worse and worse. The intervals that it would operate
correctly between cleanings grew shorter and shorter, and now even cleaning
it seems to have little effect. It will track down the screen quite well,
but it's a real effort to get it to track upwards, as if something just
isn't making contact. I've picked off every bit of fuzz and even tried
different adjustments of the little rollers because sometimes moving one
even a little bit either direction will make a big improvement, but nothing
seems to help. Is there any alternative to just buying an external pointing
device? I'm resisting this, because decreases portability.

******************************************************************************
Gayle Hodur
ghodur@redshift.com