puckstopper55 said:
The quote below is taken directly off of logitech's website:
"The surface on which you use the mouse can significantly affect battery life and performance. Lighter surfaces extend battery life and increase performance, while darker ones shorten and worsen it. Bright, matt surfaces (not glossy ones) are recommended. A simple white mouse pad is an ideal choice"
I think they know a little more about it then we "pretend" to.
Puckstopper55, I appreciate all of the advice and information you have added to this post. It is very helpful. This post isn't directed at you, it's just my caveat emptor nature kicking in. Now I'm going to question this Logitech statement.
Okay, isn't this referring to wireless optical mice?
I'm talking about wired optical mice. Not that they should be that different but they are different. In any event, Logitech seems to recommend bright, matte surface mouse pads in general and white for ideal performance. That doesn't negate my mouse experience or my suggestion to try different mouse pads to possibly improve the performance of your optical mouse. Cat and others seem to be aiming for normal performance from their mice in VMK, they don't seem to be aiming for ideal performance. What does Logitech or any other manufacturer recommend for good but less than ideal performance?
Remember, Logitech may be pretending to know more too. We don't really know their motivation for this statement. They have an agenda - to sell their mice and pads. They may also have some performance issues and may be offloading the blame onto non-white, non-matte mouse pads. The statement could be quite true or totally made up as an answer to a problem report or somewhere in between. BTW, it's "matte", not "matt".
I'm not picking on you, I'm picking on them. I wrote and maintained software for several large computer companies over the years. I know what types of false or misleading information we propagated through our documentation and support channels. Part of our personal performance was based on how quickly we closed a problem report. We had a lot of incentive to come up with a "white mouse pad" kind of answer which may come from an engineer who uses a white mouse pad and doesn't have mouse performance issues. Seriously, the goal seemed to be to close the problem report for any reason, rather than actually solve the customer's problem (much like the VMK black hole). It costs very little to close a report compared to what it costs to fix a performance problem. Because of that, I question just about anything a manufacturer says.
Memory lane moment... My first experience with an optical mouse was over 20 years ago with a Logitech mouse. Back then, the mouse pad was a shiny, stiff metal plate with a graph paper like grid printed on it. The axis lines on the grid were a different color, apparently so the mouse could find the (0,0) coordinate. We had to use that pad and had to calibrate the mouse by sliding it slowly across the pad each time we started up the computer. If you scratched or dented the pad, you most likely needed to buy a new one and they were very expensive! The computer was a workhorse with a full megabyte of memory!
I'm so glad technology has improved!
Back to today... Again, my suggestion to try a different mouse pad is based on my mouse performance improving greatly after I switched mouse pads in the middle of a haunted mansion game. That's just one data point which is statistically insignificant. It seems to be a "your mileage may vary" situation and my mileage varied greatly from what I expected.