Color on my desk is throwing off my optical mouse! How can I neutralize it?

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BustaUppa

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I've got this wooden desk. The area where I've used my mouse has this discolored blotch on it; I think using the mouse just sort of wore down the artifcial wood pattern on it. Now whenever I move my mouse across that area, the response is all buggy and laggy and out of whack. So I have to basically cramp my mouse usage into a "fresh" area of the desk and that is getting annoying.

So I guess I need a mousepad right? But I hear that the wrong kind of mousepad can be useless when an optical mouse it used. So where can I get a cheapass OPTICAL mousepad? Or is there another viable solution?
 
I would imagine any type of glossy surface mousepad would work perfectly fine.. or even a cheap glossy table placemat if you have the real estate on your desk. The old school optical mouses required a mirror finished mousepad to work, so you may be able to find one of those, I'd imagine it would work fairly well.
 
Probably a cheapo mousepad from anywhere will work. Opticals only have issue on non-smooth surfaces (hence like your problem now). So any fabric mousepad should be ok. The hard plastic ones will cause issue because they aren't smooth, and were designed to help move the ball in old mice.

Another solution if you have the cash/nonCAG way? Laser mouse from Logitech.
 
I have a cheap Magic: The Gathering mouse pad that they were giving away at E3 last year. It's flimsy and dull. It works perfectly fine w/ my op mouse.
 
Any cloth dollar store mouse pad should work fine. That's what I have and it works fine. Just stay away from plastic ones like strell said, those don't work at all.
 
You could use a note pad, piece of cardboard or pretty much anything. The only times i've had issues with optical mice is on a glass surface.
 
I have cloth mousepads with patterns from a calendar printed on it, to a chinese character in a frame (printed on the cloth), to a solid black color. They all work fine w/ my optical mouse. I have 2 newer Logitechs (mx300, mx518), and a new wireless MS optical mouse. All fine w/ cloth pads.
 
Just avoid a something a solid color with a matte finish. The mouse works by tracking changes. Its optical-- it sees which way you move it-- if theres nothing to differentiate one cm from the next, then it wont know its moving. Cloth works great because it can track the threads.
 
Since it sounds like you're not looking for any great fashion statement, I'd suggest just putting a magazine there, or even tape down a piece of paper. I've done both. My favorite mousepad, which I used for years, was an old coffee table book about Vikings.

I'll agree on the odd finishes throwing off the optics though. I have a steel mouse pad with a hard matte finish here at work and sometimes my cursor will creep to the left very very slowly. But the mouse pad looks kickass, so I use it. Rarely does it creep.

My history:
Taped graph paper as mouse pad = 2 yrs
Viking coffee table book as mouse pad = 4 yrs
Magazine as mouse pad = sporadic, not more than a week at a time.
 
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