There has been a big scare recently in the mouse pad industry. The culprit? A relatively new product – the optical mouse. The fear is, as optical mice gain popularity, mouse pad sales at every level will decline. This has the potential to impact a great number of ancillary businesses… from the manufacturer all the way down to the little guy like me, who sells an end product.

Basically, an optical mouse does not have the traditional ball/roller mechanism previously requiring the aid of some type of mouse pad. The optical mouse can be used on almost any surface… a desk, a book or even the top of your head (assuming it's flat). The optic light is simply transferred to whatever surface the mouse is sitting on, thereby moving the pointer on your screen. Fairly slick!

Side note – if you want to harmlessly torture a coworker who uses an optical mouse, here is what you do. When he/she has stepped away from their desk for a moment, simply turn their mouse upside down and cover the red optic light with a sticky side of a Post-It-Note. This “blinds" the optic capabilities of the mouse and will send your office mate into fits of frustration as they move the mouse, but the pointer on the screen doesn’t budge. Ahhhhh good times!

I first became aware of the optical mouse dilemma when I opened my virtual eBay store. Many of my eBay friends had commented on how much they loved my product. However, after a while, I noticed a good number of these same friends had not made one single purchase. This struck me as odd.

Some serious proactive digging ensued and I discovered that many of those who had not made a purchase were relatively new optical mice users. Most gleefully remarked how they had felt freed from the burden of using a mouse pad. This obviously upset me so I embarked on a study of optical mice and their users. My findings led me to a few interesting facts.

Many optical mice users actually “missed" using a mouse pad after a few months.
Many of these same users complained of a “fingernails on a chalkboard" sound that resulted from the hard plastic bottom of the mouse scraping against whatever surface they were using.
This scraping, in fact, produced some minor scratching in many of those very surfaces!

I found this information both enlightening and encouraging since the bulk of my cartoon sales are on the mouse pad medium. And while I have no problem with the optical mouse genre (I use a wireless one myself), I am convinced a mouse pad is still a wise companion. My personal reason for using an optical mouse revolves around my disdain of cleaning out all the guck and grime from the trackball system. Very gross indeed!

So if you’ve chosen to use one of these newfangled products, don’t be so quick to dismiss the mouse pad. Think about my findings and remember, under every good mouse you’ll most likely find a worthy mouse pad.

So I say, long live the mouse pads.