Spehro Pefhany wrote:

On Wed, 05 May 2010 10:40:02 -0500, "Pete C."
wrote:


"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2010-05-04, Ed Huntress wrote:

[ ... ]

Yeah. I used a Northgate Omni Key 101 for years, a writer's favorite, until
it finally died. It clicked. I miss that sucker, but I've gotten used to the
run-of-the-mill Dells, and I have a Logitech compact, but full-sized one
that I keep in my bag. They're good enough.

What failed on it? Did you ever try to fix it? Mine still
works. Built like a tank.

[ ... ]

I have a glass-topped dining room table, and whenever I try to use the
optical mouse on it, I'm reminded that light goes right through glass. g

I've found a few surfaces that don't work with the optical. It needs some
texture or color contrast.

Sun used to supply their optical mice with a sort of bluish hard
mousepad with a fine grid structure in it. The older ones used different
LED colors for the different axes -- red for one, IR for the other, and
if you turned the mouse pad 90 degrees, it would behave in a crazy
manner, so people at school computer centers sometimes used that as a
trick to "reserve" a workstation for their use. Everyone else would try
it, find that the mouse behaved strangely, and look for another
computers. When the originator came back, he would sit down, turn the
keypad back to the proper orientation, and work happily. :-)

The later optical mice used a different grid, though it looked
similar, it was not orientation sensitive.

The current optical mice use a camera and image processing. They do not
require any special mousepad and only have issues with perfectly smooth,
texture and contrast free surfaces. A piece of paper makes a suitable
mousepad in such cases.

Why is it that hotel operators think transparent glass would be a
splendid material for a hotel room work desk?

Because the glass doesn't get burn marks from smokers leaving cigs on
the table in the non-smoking room. They also don't get the dings and
gouges that a wood top does. Grab a page from the guide book, often nice
paper with threads and whatnot and it works well as a mousepad.