Does it irritate you when the mouse pointer doesn't track right when you move the mouse? They make some mouse pads surfaces too slick to work right. Buy a piece of fine grit (200 or higher) wet or dry sandpaper. It will probably be black. Cut it to size to fit over your current mouse pad. Take a piece of scotch tape about 4 inches long, loop it and stick it to itself so that the sticky side is facing out. Press it down to a corner of the current mouse pad about 1/2" in. Do this for the other corners. Carefully place the cut-to-size sandpaper on the mouse pad and press down. Voila.
I had friends who had difficulty holding their arms up, hands on the desk. I suggested they use their thighs as mouse pads. Jeans work well.
... wouldn't work for me. I have a large screen across the room for watching movies. I'm waiting for them to come out with a screen that reads my mind and knows what I want. On second thought, maybe not. Anything that reads my mind would call the police immediately.
... and yes, I know about those cameras that track you eyes and can pinpoint where you're looking. I tried that once. Problem is ... I'm cross-eyed and the camera could never tell which of two places I was looking.
That's not the solution but I appreciate the thought. I take a q-tip and rubbing alcohol to the little lens thingy often. My sandpaper pad solved the problem.
If it's a mouse with a ball, the ball should be removed occasionally and cleaned so that it tracks smoothly. Glad your sandpaper works but I wouldn't want my sleeve/wrist sliding on that.
It actually could work for you. My iPad has the option of projecting things up to the television or a different monitor. I never do that, but it has that option. The only time we used it was before Bobby got his smart TV, and we would throw movies up to the old television from the ipad. Now that he has the new tv, that is not necessary.
I can't recall the last time I had a mouse. At work and at home, I used a trackball for decades: They sit in one spot so do not require room to move around. You don't have to pick it up and set it back down because you ran out of pad room while the cursor is still in the middle of the screen. I used it in conjunction with a left handed keyboard. A regular keyboard has the number pad to the right, so you have to reach over it to use the mouse. This puts stress on your arm and on your neck. Moving the keypad to the left allows you to be positioned in the middle of the typing keyboard with the mouse (or the trackball) to be "right there" without ever reaching. It really does make a huge difference (assuming you're not a southpaw.) Now that I'm a Web-Surfing Couch-Commando, I have one of these with a touch pad sitting on my lap: I will say that if you do a lot of graphics work, doing fine detail is difficult with anything but a mouse.
It's an optical, remote mouse. The mouse pad surface is so fine grained it barely feels rough.The thought of handling mouse balls is disgusting, Beth.
No, not a ball. Although some laptops may still use a ball-type apparatus, I think most of them use a flat surface upon which all of the functions of a mouse can be attained. I don't much care for the functionality of many of the trackpads on many of the PC laptops, as compared to the MacBook, but they work on the same principle. Since I use both a MacBook and either an iMac or, as is the case right now, a Mini Mac, I found it difficult to go from using the trackpad on the MacBook to a mouse with the iMac, so I bought an external trackpad to use with the iMac instead of a mouse, and have been using that exclusively for the past several years.
Dwight: I have a mouse pad improvement tip I’d like to share with you. Yvonne: Get a touchscreen device. Mary: Use your thighs, not a pad. Beth: Clean your mouse. Dwight: Eye movement tracking devices won’t work for me. Yvonne: I bet those eye movement tracking devices will work for you. John: Use a trackball. Get a left-hand keyboard. Get a touchpad. Ken: I prefer trackpads. LOL. Thanks for the tip, Dwight. It looks like you helped a lot of people today. LOL.