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Date |
: Mar 4th, 2001 |
| Category |
: Input Devices |
| Manufacturer |
: Mouse Skatez |
| Author |
: Jin-Wei Tioh |
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"What are the Mouse Skatez?", you are wondering. They are a smooth, slippery tape which you stick on or use to replace the teflon feet on your mouse. According to the scientific and highly technical explanation on their site, the Mouse Skatez are made of "super slippery stuff". Plain vanilla teflon is already slick, and the Mouse Skatez one ups it.
At US$6.95 + shipping, the Mouse Skatez package consists of two 4.5" long strips, an alcohol pad (to clean the feet of your mouse) and an instruction sheet. There is enough material to outfit two, or even three regular-sized mice. The two strips were nearly enough to outfit three basic Logitech Wheelmice (M-S48). All this fits neatly into a standard envelope, which renders postage cost negligeable.
Installation
To help you better understand how exactly the Mouse Skatez work, here are the installation instructions from the provided instruction sheet :
- Clean the mouse feet on your mouse with the
alcohol pad provided with the Mouse Skatez.
- Measure the Mouse Skatez before trimming them to
size - be sure that they cover the entire area of the
old feet.
- Trim the Mouse Skatez to fit the mouse feet on
your mouse.
- Peel the Mouse Skatez from their backing and
finally;
- Paste the Skatez over the mouse feet on your
mouse, rubbing gently to secure them in place.
However, there are a few things to take special note of. Make sure that the Mouse Skatez covers the entire mouse foot (I made a minor mistake with mine, but it still works swell).
If your mouse has a "C" shaped or "smily face" foot, you would probably not be able to cover it completely. It can't be helped in this case, and the Skatez will still work fine. Some suggestions :
Acid Test
Now for the acid test. Does it actually work? Like a charm! The Logitech worked like it was brand new. I thought that my Icemat was already a real smooth mousing surface, but with the addition of the Mouse Skatez, my mouse felt like it was running on thin air. Even the mousing experience on an el cheapo mousemat felt much better. Graphics work and death-matching were even more pleasant because you don't have to apply as much force to initiate movement. This is because there are two types of friction, namely static friction and kinetic friction. Since kinetic friction (ie. friction on the object when it is in motion) is always less than static friction (ie. friction on the object when it is just about to begin motion), the main thing the Mouse Skatez does is to reduce the coefficient of static friction (a property of all surfaces).
There is a flip side to this however. If you're not used to such low resistance in mouse movement, the really ultra-slick movement will start to annoy you in a hurry. You have to learn to keep your hand really still. An example of this would be sniping or pixel-level image editing, where you want higher resistance to limit your mouse movement. I like the feel given by the Mouse Skatez, but even then, I needed a while to get used to it in Unreal Tournament, where very precise shooting was nearly impossible at first.
Another concern is whether the Mouse Skatez would remain adhered to the mouse feet. Rest assured, as its adhesive power is greater than that of even electrician's tape. This ensured that it did not start to peel off even after 2 weeks of intensive use.
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