Scrolling delay using firefox and external monitor/mouse

I've noticed something strange, and I'm wondering if this issue may be my graphics card being taxed harder than normal. I just got an external 22'' Dell 2009WA monitor hooked up to my 2.53 unibody macbook pro. I've also connected an external mouse and keyboard. The mouse is just a regular old dell two button (w/scroll wheel) mouse that I used to use with my old pc. Something I've noticed in firefox no matter how sparse the webpage is or how graphics filled it is that scrolling with my mouse wheel has a slight delay on it. By this I mean I'll turn the wheel three clicks (to scroll through a recently loaded webpage), but the page won't scroll down until about a second or two later. Once I get going on that page, the scroll wheel works just fine w/out the delay. I know the mouse isn't broken as it works fine with my pc. And I've tried fiddling with the mouse/keyboard scrolling preferences in mac os x to no avail. Is my graphics card (9400) being taxed by running an external monitor at 1680, such that my system takes a bit to scroll using my external mouse? Is it possible that there's just too much taxing the graphics card and that's why the mouse scrolling is delayed/jumpy? It seems strange to me as I never noticed this when using my external mouse with the regular 15'' internal macbook pro's screen. Using the external monitor, the first time I try to scroll a webpage causes this slight 1 second delay before it gets going. I don't have the delay at any other times or in other application or the finder.

Bump. Anyone else run into this issue? My mouse may have some incompatibility with osx for some reason, but it's plugged in directly via usb. That's a universal interface.

bryanus said:

I'm having the exact same issue. I notice it mostly in Firefox as I use that browser all day.

I am running 10.6.1 on a MBP 17" 2.8GHz and an Apple BT keyboard and Kensington TurboMouse USB.

I've had this issue with two MBP's actually; I had the glossy version previously and couldn't stand it and returned it for the matte option which I have now.

The new MBP has the same issue, albeit I simply swapped the hard drive over from my previous MBP instead of wiping and starting from scratch. I was hoping Snow Leopard would fix it, but it didn't.

I know that the Kensington TurboMouse software isn't officially supported by Kensington for SL, but it seems to work fine for me otherwise (all macros, sensitivity, speed, etc. work fine for me).

I get the same lag/delay when I'm not tethered to the TurboMouse and only using the trackpad. I notice the most when scrolling vertically: I click and scroll, then the browser catches up with me about a second later. Pretty annoying!

I never had this issue with my previous MBP 2.33GHz 15" C2D.

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I never figured out what's causing it. But it seems to be on firefox mostly and when I have a bunch of tabs open (heavy cpu/memory use?). Since it happens with the trackpad as well, we can rule out the usb external mouse. I doubt it's the display too. Probably something about firefox.

bryanus said:

I think you're right that it's Firefox related.

Unfortunately I find Safari to be a pretty lame browser so I don't think I can make a full switch to it (I require a few FireFox-only plugins).

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I think safaris sucks as well, which is why I've stuck with firefox despite the lagginess. The mouse lag happens frequently, but I have honestly become sort of used to it over the last 5 months. I hope you find some resolution in your tests.

kasakka said:

Had that as well. The fix is simple: turn off smooth scrolling from Firefox preferences. It seems to sometimes cause the lag. I assume it somehow interferes with the smooth scrolling option in System Preferences -> Appearance.

Refreshing the page usually fixes the problem too. I haven't seen it after updating to FF 3.5.3 so check that as well.

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Unfortunately, I still have the lag and have had smooth scrolling turned off for years