External Mouse "lagging" On Suse 9.2 On Hp Laptop

I just (finally) completely ditched my XP partition on my primary laptop.

Found that the mouse is lagging. When I use the built-in touchpad on the HP compaq nc4000 there is no lag or delay, but when using the attached Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer (USB), it lags quite a lot, especially when the machine is "busy".

It can almost seem like the USB mouse isn't getting sufficient priority or something similar.

Is this a common problem? Have searched for it, but only found the reverse problem from other users (ie. in cases where the external mouse works well but builtin pad is problematic. In my case it's the opposite. External mouse is the problem)

Thanks,

-Yalla