I found a cool new tip from the Illustrator forum
http://www.adobe.com/support/forums/ over at the Adobe website, on using your mouse wheel to scroll around the Illustrator artboard.
Scroll up and down with the mouse wheel;
Scroll left and right with Ctrl-mouse wheel;
Scroll left and right faster with Shift-Ctrl-mouse wheel;
Zoom in and out with Alt-mouse wheel.
Cheers
Jano