(Apologies for going for the obvious Subject line.)

I've been a mouse aficionado for several years now... I definitely know what I like, and why, in terms of mouse size, shape, weight, and ball position. So I've been a little slow to get on the optical mouse bandwagon. Today though I picked up a Logitech optical wheel mouse with the 2x Optical logo on the box; it has two cameras operating in tandem to get rid of tracking errors, and word on the street is that this actually does work. If you like the big hand-filling style of mouse, reportedly the latest MS optical mouse is also good in this regard, but I like the small narrow form factor myself.

I've been experimenting with it today and It's funny how it reveals all the habits I've unconsciously developed for dealing with a ball mouse. Twitches to get the ball moving for more accuracy on a shot... little sideways lifts and slides to re-center the mouse by getting the wheel off the pad without lifting the whole mouse... partial lifts so that the ball still touches the pad but none of the mouse body does except the very back tip, for sensitivity. Some pretty wacky stuff now that I'm conscious of it.

With the optical, of course, that all goes out the window. I'm pretty happy that the whole issue of dealing with mouse ball inertia/friction is gone; there's a whole suite of weird twitch/swoop/wipe maneuvers for dealing with that stuff while using sniper-type weapons, and I'll be glad to get rid of those. If I want to move the crosshairs a pixel to the left, now I just move the mouse a little and they go there, no funny business. And of course no more ball cleaning. :-) Learning how to re-center the mouse harmlessly doesn't look like it will be too tough, and maybe reducing the amount of grip-and-lift will be kinder to my hand.

So far so good then. The resurrected Razer may be preaching the gospel of the ball mouse for hardcore gamers, but It's looking to me like optical tech may be one of those all-around nice advancements for gamer interfaces, like the widespread acceptance of USB was. And it makes your mouse glow red! You can't beat that. I guess over the next few days I'll find out if there are any hidden pitfalls.

P.S. If you get a Logitech mouse, make sure to also download the mouse registry file for gamers from the MouseWare downloads page on their website, so the mousewheel will work in games.