[SOLVED] Mouse flicking problem - Mousepad's fault

[Gincal]

I have an HP Omen Mousepad 300 (cloth), very wide, I love it, had it for a few yeras now. I have animals and fur everywhere, so I clean it everytime I use my computer, just with my hand, wipe the hairs and dust away. I don't eat whem I play, so everything is clean and tidy.

Recently, my cat got sick and I allowed it to sleep on my mousepad. They always have loads of hair and little stones from their litter boxes, but I would still clean it all very well before using the mousepad, no biggie.

The problem: flicking the mouse. In FPS games, if I flick the mouse too quickly the game won't register the whole movement, it will stop in the mid of the flick, it doesn't even need to be such a quick flick, just a relatively quick one. Since my mouse is kinda poor quality I tried a different one and the same thing happened, so I tried using my mouse without the mousepad and it was fixed. No problem whatsoever. I didn't want that so I tried an old plastic mousepad and no problem at all, which is the mousepad I have been using.

I tried cleaning the cloth mousepad as hard as I could. Twice with regular bar soap, in warm water and scrubbing it clean and letting it dry. Once with laundry powder (got the idea online) and scrubbed it as hard as I could -- it turned out it worked, when I had cleaned with just bar soap and not too much scrubbing there were some dust spots left, with the laundry powder and some hard scrubbing it was really squeaky clean, but the problem persists! The only thing different I had done was, after my cat sleeping there, using on of those rolls with glue to clean hairs away, but I had already done that (once or twice) before and it hadn't been a problem, and I'm sure washing it hard in water 3 times would clean that anyway.

I love the mousepad, it wasn't super expensive or anything, it's just a good product and it feels like such a stupid problem. I don't know, is this kind of wear and tear something that happens with a cloth mousepad? It did have a lot of use, but it was always well kept.

I'm also thinking if, somehow, the fact that both the mouses I tested were poor quality means that they work better on other kinds of surfaces like the desk itself or a poor plastic mousepad, I don't know, but I have used both this mouse and mousepad together for a few years and only now did this problem present.

Thanks anyway!

 

[Ralston18]

Quite understandable.

It is all too easy to get attached to things in these crazy times. Marketing works very hard to ensure that that happens in the name of "customer loyalty".

Almost all products nowadays are designed with some built in EOL (End of Life). Likely true for your favored mouse pad.

Are you able to go online or anywhere and find an identical mouse pad?

You can hit a happy balance: find a new mouse pad that works and let your cat continue to sleep on the old mouse pad.

Which might extend the life of the new mouse pad.

Or find other ways to repurpose the mouse pad. I used old mouse pads to make non-skid feet for a printer that vibrated and moved. One mouse pad was used to stop a tool box rattle in my truck. Another quieted an external hard drive.

All in all you can end up with a "happy" mouse, a happy cat, and a happy you.