I have an optical mouse, with the usual complement of what I assume are Teflon pads on its bottom (snerk) to allow it to slide smoothly across the pad. Every so often I feel the mouse getting sticky, so I pick it up and peer at its underside, to discover that the Teflon pads are covered with a layer of unidentifiable brown muck, which, if it’s not TMI, has about the same consistency as semi-dried snot.
Now I’m not the world’s most hygenic person, but my desk is reasonably tidy, and I clean my mouse pad every so often, but my mouse still insists on picking up this stuff, so I am compelled to ask: what the heck is it? It doesn’t seem to appear anywhere else. Is my mouse secreting something? Should I be worried?
Good old ‘Finger Funk’. As others have said, it’s basically normal household dust (dead skin cells, clothing fibres, the odd hair, paper dust, etc., etc.) mixed with sebum/oils from your skin. Consistency can vary between ‘earwax’, ‘road tar’ and ‘sticky cloth’ depending on the exact composition. Anyone who ever had to deal with a lab full of pc’s using old-school ball mice was intimately familar with this stuff which used to end up not just on the pads but on the rollers too. Yeck!
Or in other words, it’s a sweaty dust bunny. Enjoy.
Toss the pad. Get a piece of glossy white card stock and use that as an Optical Mouse Pad.
You can tell when it’s dirty and needs replacement.
The price is right, I use a section of a mailed in advertisement with a large white area which is large enough to navigate the screen
A white surface is a better reflector and thus will extend battery life if the mouse is battery powered.
Nice prank there. That pure white surface will effectively blind the mouse and it won’t work. Well, it’ll work, but you’ll have to move ten times to get it to move a quarter inch on screen.
Optical mice don’t need special pads, but they do need to be on a surface with enough visible variation so they’ll see movement.
As to the OP - how grubby is your desk? I just looked at my mouse’s feet, and they’re clean.
I know that a shiny painted wood surface is completely useless; I used to have a sheet of paper as a pad before it started falling apart much too often. My new mouse pad also has a cushion for my wrist, which is a Good Thing.
Well, all I can say is that while it may not meet chip-fabrication standards, it’s clean. I just ran a finger over the top, and there’s no visible dust. Nothing else on my desk seems to have this strange tendency to accumulate gunk, so as **daffyduck **and **slaphead **both mentioned, it must be dead skin et al. I just don’t quite like the image of myself as a skin-shedding machine, but I suppose I’m just going to have to face it. Incidentally, I have to de-grub my mouse’s feet every week or so, so perhaps I shed more skin than most people.
not in my experience. A white, non-glossy, piece of paper was my mousepad of choice all throughout college with my optical mouse. And you’re also never without something to take quick notes on.
Ordinary white paper definitely works, but glossy paper doesn’t (I’ve tried) and neither does a shiny surface, as noted above.
The point about having something to take quick notes on is an excellent one - however, my mouse pads rapidly became more notes and rough work than blank space, and eventually got so covered in scribbles that virtually nothing was legible. Still worked great as a mouse pad, though.
Apparently all mice are not equal. Mine works very nicely on glossy card stock, thank you very much!
Being powered by 2 AA alkaline cells that call it quits after about 2 months I should get one that switches off when not in use or one with rechargeable batteries.
That calls for a rant on wall warts, battery powered peripherals, etc. etc.
All these should be standardized to the LCD for a minimum of variations and wall warts of only a few variations AND be required to have ID as to device they are sold with.
