Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!percival!bucket!orion1!pmb
From: pmb@orion1.hf.intel.com (Patti Beadles)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: optical mouse
Message-ID: <216@orion1.hf.intel.com>
Date: 13 Sep 88 17:33:22 GMT
References: <42900019@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu> <42900020@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: pmb@orion1.hf.intel.com (Patti Beadles)
Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro OR
Lines: 15

In article <42900020@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu> leung@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu writes:
>It seems that Mouse Systems has a corner on the market.  Several
>people gave some good arguments against optical mice (most having
>to do with the special pad required) but none that really applied
>to my own use.  (Now to find a cheap mail order place.)

As an aside, I found that it's pretty easy to create a replacement for
a Mouse Systems' Mouse pad.  Xeroxing it will work, though not well.
What we wound up doing was writing a PostScript program to print one on
our Apple LaserWriter.  It worked almost as well as the real thing, and
we could vary the resolution and the size of the pad at will.  (It was
also pretty cheap.  :-)

If anybody is interested, I can mail them a copy of the program to do
it, though it's a pretty trivial thing to write.