Mouse Issues

A long long time ago at a computer desk far far away I had this mouse I used to call the mouse from hell.  It would go wherever it wanted to as if it had a mind of its own.  A friend of mine, when I told him about it, was nice enough to buy me a new mouse.  It was one of those little cat toys with catnip in it, yes, a catnip stuffed mouse.  I've had that thing for going on 14 years now and to this point in time it is the only mouse I have ever owned that did not give me any problems.  If only I could figure out how to hook it up to my computer.

I recently purchased a new mouse.  It cost me $359 and while that might seem outrageous I am quite content with paying that much for something as simple as a mouse if it works the way I want it to.  You see, I hate mice, despise them.  I have had so many over the years and tried so many styles it is crazy.  I've found that for me a tackball mouse is the only way to go.

Using a traditional mouse has never worked for me.  Quite frankly I can not see how anyone can use one of those.  They are not even close to being precision and they require a lot of movement and a lot of space to allow all that movement.  A track ball is precision, it sits in one place and it is really comfortable to use.

One issue that seems to be an issue sometimes is that the ball gets dirty and the response time gets sluggish.  Sluggish is not good, I like a trackball because of the freedom of movement it allows over a traditional mouse, not to mention the ability to do 3D movement, something a standard mouse can not do as simply.  I can run circles around someone in PvP with a trackball.  Make faster movements and adjustments even when half asleep then even the best player in the world can when they are at their peak.  That is one of the beauties of the trackball.  Until it starts getting sluggish.

That is the reason I went out and got a new one recently.  They do not make them like they used to being they must not sell all that well.  Add to that, being they do not sell as well, they do not have updated ones, like ones with 5 buttons and the such.  I found one that had 5 buttons and I had to get it.  So I went on Amazon and get myself the Microsoft D67-00001 Trackball Optical Mouse and it is a beauty for sure.

One thing that I am noticing that is a problem is the one word you see in there, Optical.  Optical is the way everything seems to be now.  Anyone that has ever used mechanical extensively and optical extensively will tell you that optical can not hold a candle to mechanical.  The technology is just not there yet.  Optical skips a beat sometimes.  That means that you will not always have precision movement.  I was quite upset that something that cost as much as this mouse did would still have the problem I have seen with all other optical mice.  I held hope that an optical trackball would have better luck then the traditional style optical mice out there.

No such luck.  The trackball has the same issues.  Kind of blows my precision out of the water but what can you do.  I'll learn to adjust.  It is larger then my previous trackballs.  Much larger.  Do you know who Andre the Giant was?  He was a wrestler and if you ever saw the movie the Princess Bride he was the big guy there.  Remember his hands, he could cover someones entire face?  Well, that is who this mouse was designed for.  Geeze, makes me feel like I have the hands of a 12 year old with that thing.  That was no big deal really, I adjusted to it quickly.  It is not as bad as I first thought it would be.

My issue comes down to why I decided to get a new trackball.  My old one was starting to get sluggish.  Over the years of popping out the ball and cleaning it, it starts to lose its luster and it starts to get a little sluggish once in a while with the mechanical system of the old style trackballs.  So I figured I would get a new one and not just the same one I have bought 3 times over the past 12 or so years.  The new one is optical and has 5 buttons.  My healer loves me for the 5 buttons as do all the people that my heals keep alive.

The thing is that the optical mouse has the same issue (brand new) that the old mouse had (after many years of use).  It gets sluggish from time to time.  The thing is that optical does not pick things up sometimes.  It misses movement.  I hate that.  So now I need to decide to either move back to the old style, (I bought one of those also at the same time just in case I did not like this, as a back up) find a way to make the optical pick movement up better or just get used to it.

Yesterday when running my daily on my Priest it just stopped responding completely.  Not a good thing when you use healbot and all your other spells are all designed for mouse over.  (Stupid me forgot I could have used the F keys to target)  It was all guildies so we were on vent, I said my mouse died and to hold up, so no harm, no foul.  The mouse came back right away, it was just one of the pitfalls of optical.  Sometimes it does not pick movement up.  It died for all of 4 or maybe 5 seconds but in any thing where you need maximum use for quick response time 4 or 5 seconds is a lifetime.

I need to find a 5 button trackball mouse that is NOT optical.  It is amazing that everything has changed to optical and optical is suboptimal when it comes to mice.  But then again, trackballs have gone the way of the dodo for the most part and they were/are vastly superior to traditional mice.

Goes to show you that quality means nothing when it comes to the public buying it.  You can go way back to prove that one as well.  The Betamax machines where leaps and bounds better then the VHS machines and yet every household in the world ended up having a VHS while most people never even heard of a Betamax.

Never leave it up to the public to decide what is best.  If history shows us anything it is that people will make the wrong decision 90% of the time given the option. 

If anyone has mouse options please feel free to share.  I need something that moves when I need it to move, more so on my healer (and for PvP).  I can deal with it on my DPS characters or even tank characters, but people will die without my mouse working perfectly on my healer.