wine users - Nov 2011 - Mouse problems in many games

I've been searching every forum I can think of and have only found solutions
for individual games, none of which are the ones I'm having a problem with.
I have an Acer Aspire 1699, with an ATI Radeon 1550x graphics card, dual core
CPU running at 1.8GHz. I'm running Ubuntu 11.04. So far I've had this
problem with Black & White 2, Cities In Motion, Trainz 12, Hidden &
Dangerous, and a few more which I wasn't really seriously interested in.

When the game starts up there is usually a pointer controlled by the mouse.
Sometimes in the first stage this works. When I go on to the start of the game,
the pointer responds very erratically, from a couple to several seconds after
I've moved the mouse. The pointer will move a great distance, even though
I've only moved the mouse a little. The direction the pointer moves is
difficult to predict, although it's generally in the direction I move the
mouse. This happens with games that are rated Platinum in AppsDB.

I have the open source (default) graphics driver installed, because ATI has not
produced an updated driver since 2009. I tend to suspect the graphics driver,
but suppose it could be the mouse driver -- I saw one recommendation to edit the
/etc/x11/xorg.conf file. I find it hard to believe this problem is unique to me,
so I must be searching the wrong key words. Any recommendations?

If you are using a touchpad in a notebook this is a know xinput2
problem in wine. Try using a usb mouse and if it fixes the problem it
is really related to the bug below:
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27028

No, I'm using a USB mouse on an Acer Aspire 1610 desktop machine with an ATI
Radeon x1550 graphics card, running Ubuntu Linux 11.04 with the default open
source graphics drivers and the default mouse drivers. I bought the machine in
2007, and wish I had spent a little more for a faster CPU and better graphics
card, but it sounded like a good buy at the time.