Some babies enjoy banging on pots and pans. Jessie Traver prefers banging on a keyboard. Any time her parents say, "let's play on the computer," Jessie, 18 months, squeals and toddles toward the PC.

Unlike a keyboard that could last for some time, the lifespan of a computer mouse seems to be shorter than that. If this is the case, some users tend to just throw away this peripheral because they ...