Mechanical Mice Work Best

   Back when I began using computers, there were only one type of cursor-positioning mice in general use, the type with a small but heavy rubber surfaced ball that rotated two shafts mechanically and indicated motion that way.  They worked fine, although they needed to be cleaned periodically for proper use.  Since most people I observed around me never cleaned theirs, the performance would get spotty and they blamed the design and enthusiastically embraced optical mice when when came out, since they could be absolutely filthy dirty and they would still work fine (provided nothing was blocking them optically.
   But wait - there was another problem with the mechanical type - since they needed a certain amount of friction to work properly (to mechanically turn the rubber ball), they didn't work very well on slippery surfaces.  The blazingly simple answer to that was to use them on a sheet of paper, but while I used a sheet of A3 or whatever non-glossy paper was handy and got great performance that way, I don't recall anyone around me noticing what was happening and doing a little work procedure kaizen for themselves.
   Fast forward to the era where all externally-connected computer pointing devices are optical and I've found (to my intense irritation) that one optical device after another starts out working great, but develops a kind of glitch where if you're trying to move it precisely (like when cropping a photograph) it will jump or stick a little.  I don't know if the sensor for the light beam is wearing out or what, but it's really irritating when editing pictures....
   Fast forward again to yours truly walking down a street in Akihabara about a month ago.  I noticed a box of old PS/2 connector mechanical mice - new ones no less (old stock) and so I bought a couple (as my desktop machine has both USB and PS/2 sockets) and while I wasn't really expecting it to be great, I'm finding that it's much much more precise in movement (on a sheet of copy paper, as of old) than the optical ones I have.  The amount of motion required for moving the pointer is quite a bit more, but after going into the settings on my computer and dialing the speed up, it works absolutely great.  No jumping or stalling  - yet.  Hopefully it will just keep working this way and I won't need to go back to optical mice which have - time after time after time - started produced spotty performance after using them for a few months.
   Granted, I've only been using this new (old stock) mechanical mouse for a few weeks, but I remember how it was before - if the performance started to get weird, just clearing out dust buildup on the metal shafts (that come in contact with the rubber ball) would restore performance.

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
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