Icemat Black 2nd Edition Review
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Gamers are always looking for that little something to give them an edge: the perfect video card, the best laser mouse, a gaming keyboard, and even surround sound speakers. But one thing I haven’t seen yet are the people flocking to buy special mouse pads. Today we’ll be looking at the Icemat Black 2
nd Edition by Icemat.
I'll admit that when I first found out I was going to be receiving the Icemat, I was skeptical. I've owned different mousing surfaces in the past, but nothing that I thought would help me with my gaming. Yeah, some were better than others, but not enough to make me really excited about them.
It used to be that you didn't dare use a mouse without a mouse pad. All the mice available were "ball mice." For those of you who have used a ball mouse, you know how finicky they were. They didn't roll well on some surfaces, they skipped, they were just an all-around pain in the backside. Worst of all, they got DIRTY! They would pick up every piece of lint and dust in a fifteen mile radius. Every so often, the mouse would just stop moving in one direction or another, and you would have to open up the bottom and scrape the accumulated crud from the rollers inside. And as Murphy's Law would specify, this always occurred at the most inopportune moment, like during that final showdown in an Unreal Tournament death-match.
Hence the mouse pad was born. Now your mouse had a uniform surface to roll on, so you never had to worry about how the mouse would respond. Many of them had anti-static properties, and would repel dust, thus keeping your mouse cleaner and happier. I personally preferred the mouse pads with the cloth-like surface. The mouse tracked nicely on them, they didn't attract dust, and the cool texture allowed for a multitude of colors and designs.
Then came optical mice. Tracking is handled by an optical sensor, rather than an actual rolling ball. Not only was this more precise, but now surfaces you once decided you could never mouse on were suddenly available. In all honesty, since switching to an optical mouse, most of the time I never even utilize a mouse pad at all.
Next: The Icemat Cometh >>
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