Symptoms: Microsoft mouse wheel scrolling is fast or sluggish in applications and games.

About the time of Fallout: New Vegas' release, Microsoft began taking suggestions on how to adjust the hardware base towards being more application friendly:
http://microsofthardwareblog.com/?p=935#comments

The issue appeared from digital, smooth scrolling mice not performing well in applications where anolog to digital scrolling code is not expressly present:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-hardware/microsoft-mouse-5000-scrolling-wheel-problem-and/075a8659-7b3d-4a38-b08d-8451184cf2cb

In April 2011, Microsoft released a fix for mice through Intellipoint software version 8.1:
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/downloads

Posting this, in case PC users find it difficult to scroll through their pip boy menu. For F:NV the functions work without issue upon application launch (once the game has been launched, and seeded into the 'Identify programs that don't scroll correctly...') menu by the user, however with other fullscreen applications there may be an alt-tab required to allow the effect to take place in Directx each time the application is launched.