[CentOS] Using a composite device under Centos 4.8 - no mouse clicks

I recently got an EEEbox.  This is an Atom based nettop.  It came with
a wireless keyboard/mouse which talk to a 2.4Ghz USB adapter (a Chicony
device as it turns out).

Now if I plug this adapter into a Centos 4.8 machine both the keyboard
and mouse are detected... but mouse clicks aren't.  I can move the mouse,
the scroll wheel works, but buttons 1/2/3 aren't detected.  Neither in X
nor in console gpm.

It worked fine in Ubuntu 10.04, and obviously works fine with Windows XP.

My feeling is that maybe perhaps the older 4.8 kernel doesn't have a
sufficiently good driver so I might be forced to compile my own (*sigh*)
but I was wondering if anyone else had come across a similar issue and
had a work around?

-- 

rgds
Stephen