Re: CRAP Poll: My Mouse Is...

On Wed, 29 May 2024 21:39:13 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:
>

On Wed, 29 May 2024 03:50:49 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:
>

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Frankly mousepad is if anything more important.

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Shhhh! Don't give away next week's CRAP Poll! ;-)

>
Oops.  :)
>

Maybe it's just me -or the average mice I use- but I've never really
seen/felt much advantage from mouse pads. Or rather, not from a mouse
pad over an average surface (there are times when a mouse pad is
absolutely necessary because the table you're on is just so shitty
that the mouse can't pick up anything, but in that case a piece of
paper would work just as well).

>
The 3M Precise Mousing Surface was a godsend back in the ball mice days,
it was designed as a sheet of peaks and valleys, the ball rolled on the
peaks and the cruft that always ended up on the pad (dust, skin cells,
whatever,) fell into the valleys.

Oh, well, back in the era of mechanical mice, things were different.
;-)

Mousepads were significantly more necessary in that era. You needed a
good grip for that ball, and most desk surfaces were insufficient to
the task. EVERYBODY had a mouse-pad back in those dark days. Using a
mouse without one was often a painful experience. You'd want a nice
padded surface, with just enough grip to make the mouse-ball roll but
not enough to make moving the mouse an effort. The pad would also need
to 'stick' to the table below, so it didn't shift as you shuttled the
mouse too and fro. Finding a good mouse-pad back then was one of the
great pleasures of computing. ;-)

I just don't see the need these days, unless your mousing surface is
particularly poor (e.g., very reflective or smooth), or you're doing
something that needs absolute precision (like an FPS e-gamer).
Otherwise, the optics on the average mouse are more than up to the
task of just using it on the desk.


What gets me is that nowadays -with mousepads becoming increasingly
irrelevant- they're FINALLY making mouse-pads bigger than the usual
20cm x 20cm squares. What I'd have given for a large mouse-pad back in
the day (in fact, back then I used a green cutting mat (45x60cm) just
because it gave me so much space to wrangle the rodent. Now you can
get proper mousepads that size fairly easily. Where was this
innovation back in the 90s? ;-P

My current 'mousepad' is a 50-year old hand-made cutting board (you

That sounds a lot thicker than I would like to use

Mostly I use it because the surface on which I place my mouse (an
end-table sitting next to my chair) is a few centimetres lower than
I'd like. The cutting board provides /just/ the right elevation.

The fact that it's a family artifact (and the surface works well as a
mousing surface) is just bonus ;-)