the MURC mousepad :D

[PAugustin]

I just had this custome made ! A glass MURC mousepad :







Its very nice, actually muche better than any other mousepad I've tried. The mouse slides better and it's more precise. Only downside is that it can be a bit noisy depending on your mouse. I put teflon pad on mine so the noise is quite low.

[Brian Ellis]

Glass, with an optical mouse????????? In fact, mouse pad with an optical mouse???????? I haven't used a mouse pad for 3 or 4 years. I bought three of the Microsoft optical abortions at $75 each when they first came out: they lasted about a year. Then went on to Logitech wireless optical and am now on a cheapo Typhoon optical wireless rechargeable.

[PAugustin]

Yes glass, it has been unpolished with acid so it can work whith optical, and I have to say it works very well. I too gave up mousepads whith optical mouse. But once you've tried this

[az]

Brian, how do you manage to kill your mice? I've had the same Logitech Dual Optical for.. three years now, I think. Before, I had a Microsoft two-button ball mouse that lasted 5+ years, and got cleaned maybe three times (because I was bored, not because it was necessary - though it was very very very dirty inside, it always worked perfectly).

AZ

[az]

Oh, and pAugustin: VERY nice mousepad

AZ

[Fat Tone]

Very nice How is it done?

Nice to see a tissue amongst the essentials on your desk (j/k)

[Brian Ellis]

Originally posted by az
Brian, how do you manage to kill your mice? I've had the same Logitech Dual Optical for.. three years now, I think. Before, I had a Microsoft two-button ball mouse that lasted 5+ years, and got cleaned maybe three times (because I was bored, not because it was necessary - though it was very very very dirty inside, it always worked perfectly).

AZ

The MS Optical has a very bad design fault. I slaughtered three of them in 12 -15 months. Where their tail enters the body, there is a sharp 90° turn without any stress relief. Constant use breaks the wires in the cable. If the designers had thought about an extended rubber grommet so that movement of the mouse distributed the stress along the cable, this would never have happened.

I then looked at the Logitech equivalents, but rejected them on the grounds that the cable was too thick and insufficiently flexible.

I therefore bought three Logitech Wireless Optical. These were less reliable than the MS ones (when they did work!) and coarser in the cursor control. Also, the cost of batteries were too high (average life with Duracell AA batteries was 1 month, so the rodents were eating 6 batteries/month). In addition, the thumb button was inconveniently placed.

I recently started trying a cheapo Typhoon (€19) which has its receiver as a docking charger with power from two AAA NiMH accus. This is much more precise than the Logitech, and I'll be changing the other two Logitech ones for Typhoon shortly. It has a power saving immobiliser, too. The thumb button is higher up. (It also has a little finger button, which is pretty useless, although it would be a thumb button for a left-hander - symmetrical design.)

[High_Jumbllama]

I also had one of the original $70 mice. I think they were called "Intellimouse Explorers" and it died within half a year but everything else Logitech, other Microsoft Mice, and various other inexpensive brands have worked fine.

[PAugustin]

Yeah I had the 1st explorer too. It died the way Brian described. But MS is nice and they send me the one you see on the picture, an explorer 3. This one is doing perfectly well and I know that the explorer 4 is really an excellent mouse !

[ZokesPro]

That`s a nice mouse pad you got there, very stylish.

[DGhost]

i've owned a couple of the MS opticals, and had one or two fail as described...

opening it up, cutting about an inch or two of cable out where the bend used to be and resoldering it made it better.

[Brian Ellis]

I did that as well, but it's a PITA doing that every few months

Put it this way, it did not restore in me any more confidence in MS as a supplier of hardware, any more than a supplier of software.

[GT98]

I killed a couple ball mice by the build up that gets on the rolling bars that are inside of them...wallered out the holes in the mounts making the mouse PIA to use since it couldnt make contact with the ball all the time.

[PAugustin]

Originally posted by Fat Tone
Very nice How is it done?

Nice to see a tissue amongst the essentials on your desk (j/k)

It's a piece of glass that has been unpoloshed with acid, the logo and the black colors are stickers on the back. The edge are diamond shaped and polished.

I find using this far better than any other mousepad I've tried and it's also a lot better than no mousepad (I went without one for a long time). A guy in a forum offered to build those custom mousepads and after I saw the work he did I offered one to my father (so I could test ), then I got mine.

As I said, the only downside is noise. My explorer 3 mouse is a bit noisy here but my father's explorer 4 is very quite.
Oh and it does come a bit expansive, 48€ for a single color logo .


The tissue you see is actually one of those microfiber cloth to clean glasses

[Marshmallowman]

Still have my orginal MS intelli mouse explorer on my second computer, it has wear marks all over it from the years of frantic game playing...never missed beat.

Hehe my second computer only runs linux, its probably why its lasted so long

The etched glass thing is a very good idea for a mouse pad, I am using crappy foam mouse pads becasue the optical does'nt track very well on featureless white desks.