reluctant USB mouse response
 

I have a logitech optical USB wheel mouse on a mandrake 10 PIII box. After a fresh boot (is there such a thing as a stale boot?) the mouse cursor wont respond to mouse movements for about 5 seconds. Even if the machine sits there unused for hours, the mouse wont respond until someone jiggles the mouse around. This is a problem since it's a kiosk. Users lose interest quickly.
The mouse lights up upon boot so it's awake. Before jiggling /usr/sbin/lsusb lists:
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 046d:c03d Logitech, Inc.
so the USB bus has found the mouse.
My InputDevice section of XF86Config-4 is
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "Auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

The window manager is icewm.

What could cause this delay?
How do I get rid of it?
Thanks.
:scratch: