I am in a rental house and I am using a laptop but the touch pad is not the best and i have a mouse but I do not have a mouse pad and I was wondering what i can use as a mouse pad and this is a very long run-on sentence.

What kind of surface are you on? I use my mouse on my couch without a mouse pad and it's fine. I also sometimes use it on my feux-wood desk and it works fine enough.

Mousepads are cheap, though. Check some out here. Really doesn't matter what you're using. I usually just use free ones my parents get from work.

You can always try a black (or dark) surface that doesn't create much friction.

If you really want a mousepad you could go to Dollarama, Walmart or Target, and get one for no more than a few dollars.

I'm on a sofa chair that doesn't work well. Any household items that I can use in the place of a pad before I can get one at a store.

A slip of paper always works for me. As long as ligt doesn't shine through too much it works.

Tape down a slice off a black garbage bag. Pretty sure that would work if it's tight.

And if you're using your laptop on a couch you can always put a book or folder beneath the piece of paper.

As Fence said, don't use shiny paper.

Depends a little on how the mouse works, is it a trackball, optical or laser?
Optical is a visible laser, laser is just a light but doesnt make light.

If its a ball, then you might want something that doesnt get dusty, that happend to my old one, and then it got worse in using.
But Optical and laser are probably better, because you just need a surface that its able to shine on, not glass, but just a surface that is not transparent.
Use those requirements, and find something flat.

If a trackball mouse gets dusty, all you need to do is unscrew the little rim around the ball, take the ball out, and scrape all the gunk off of the 3 wheels inside.

I've used my opitcal mouse on a glass table before.... taped a piece of cardboard to the underside of the glass LOL

A book is the easiest thing to use. If you have a notepad or some sort of notebook to use, it'll make it even easier.

You get free ones from your parent's work? lucky! anyway i usually use my text books as a mouse pad. or i'll just use whatever surface my MacBook happens to be on at the time.

Surely you could just cut out a bit of cardboard then staple a cotton sheet over the top, or something like that. Even if you have a piece of foam lying around. Besides, they're dirt cheap anyway and lots of places give them away for free, just keep an eye open.

Reflective surfaces don't work well for laser mouses.

Surely it has to be reflective, otherwise it would receive no input as to how far the beam has traveled, at least that's how i understand it.

Well reflective surfaces can split the beams thus having the mouse not work properly or at all.

For example my desk has a glass top.

Lol yea. I've got tons of mousepads in a stack in my office.


I could have sworn one side of the garbage bag isn't shiny.

Well, wouldn't the beam then just pass straight through the glass?

You'd think so, but the structure of glass causes it to refract and split apart.

An article about it here.

Yeah, if it refracts (which it can only do if entering at an angle) then it is still passing though, so how would the beam get back? Or am i just not understanding the concept of optical mice?

I use an optical mouse on my non reflective couch. It works perfectly.

But how does the mouse itself work? I just assumed that it sent out a beam, then worked out how long it took it to return (kind of like a bat).

Well here is a good explanation http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question631.htm

How optical mice work.

# The CMOS sensor sends each image to a digital signal processor (DSP) for analysis.
# The DSP detects patterns in the images and examines how the patterns have moved since the previous image.
# Based on the change in patterns over a sequence of images, the DSP determines how far the mouse has moved and sends the corresponding coordinates to the computer.
# The computer moves the cursor on the screen based on the coordinates received from the mouse. This happens hundreds of times each second, making the cursor appear to move very smoothly.

But it's just a beam of light, not an actual camera. I'm assuming the beam of light gets sent out, then the detector picks up the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that the light emits. Yes, that makes sense, looking at my own mouse.

Assuming it's an optical mouse, doesn't optical mean eye or something of the like?

And since reflective surfaces are very shiny and the light shoots everywhere its very hard for the mouse to find a pattern and thus operate the cursor.

Yes, but that's just it's name. Besides, you explained how it was interpreted by the computer, i'm just having trouble understanding how it gets the pattern in the first place.

Microscopic pores and cavity's in the object its on.

Maybe it tells the pattern by measuring time for the beam to be sent back it makes sense considering bumpy and deeper pores could alter response time.

I bought a Razer gaming one from eBay for £10. Works a treat.

I can't understand why you guys don't use the mouse-thing on the laptop. It' easy and you get used to it quickly.

It's not accurate enough to play games/use photoshop...

Also if you use it for too long you can get friction burns, albeit lightly but they're still uncomfortable. That and you're basically running your finger over a piece of plastic, which isn't that comfortable anyway.

It depends really. High-quality touchpads are very comfortable to use and accurate, although you'll still want a mouse for gaming/precision work as it offers more control. Unfortunately, a lot of the touchpads provided with budget laptops are frankly awful, and you are forced to use a mouse even just for web browsing.

Whereas i'd rather have one of these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-Trackman-...5262&sr=8-2

Which you don't have to move at all.

Meh I think that's a matter of personal opinion. Personally I would find that hard to use. It would also hurt my wrist, as I have some long-term tissue damage that would make keeping my hand in the right position for that trackball painful. Anyway, why are we discussing mice on a topic about mousepads