The modern mouse

I have bad memories of optical mice, from using them on Sun hardware in the 1990s.  Special mouse-mats (uncomfortable on the hand), and far less fine-control than a ball mouse.  So hitherto I’ve stuck with ball mice, and resolutely ignored the new generation of optical beasties.

But ball mice invariably deteriorate over time, even when the fluff is carefully removed.  These days their lifetimes seem way shorter than of old, too.  So I periodically have to replace them.  I took the opportunity of a few days in the big city to buy a new mouse from a high-street store.  Having experienced modern optical mice on other people’s machines, this time I got one myself.  It’s from Microsoft, and calls itself Optical Mouse 3000.

It’s a little smaller than my ideal rodent, but comfortable to use, and so far seems to work well, on a conventional mouse mat.  A clear improvement on a knackered ball mouse, though not on a pristine rodent.