Why Use Optical Mouse
It’s been a while since mechanical mice have gone out of business. These tracker ball using mice were clunky and tough to use but they were reliable (when clean) on almost any surface. The same cannot be said for the optical mouse which sometimes loses speed and behaves weirdly on certain surfaces. So why did the optical mouse replace the mechanical mouse so rapidly? Here are the reasons.
The first and foremost reason is of course the fact that most mechanical mice need to be cleaned regularly because the tracker ball constantly accumulates lint when moving on a mouse pad. On the other hand and optical mouse uses either an LED or Lasers to track the movement of the mouse and there is no contact direct or indirect between the sensor and the surface on which the mouse is moving.
Why Use Optical Mouse
Mechanical mice required quite some force to move which increased the probability of repetitive stress injury. An optical mouse can be moved with minimum effort across smooth surfaces and even the rougher ones require less force. Optical mice are much faster moving than the traditional mice with speed of up to 80 inches per second. This tracking speed could not be achieved with the traditional mice. Optical mice can perform better on almost any surface except glossy or shiny ones.
The reason behind this is that optical mice have problems sensing the light coming back from glossy (and sometimes multicolored) surfaces. However the fact that optical mice can be used quite easily even without mouse pads completely outweighs this small shortcoming. Most optical mice are more expensive than the traditional mechanical ones however due to the rapid falling prices of technology this gap is quickly becoming negligible. Laser mice are still expensive though they are much more efficient than LED mice.
