11423 What it is there to say about mouse pads? Quite a bit actually. The mouse and keyboard are your most intimate tactile connection with your computer, and the characteristics of your pointing device setup can make the difference between a pleasurable experience and fatigue or even in some cases repetitive stress injury.

One of the keys to comfortable mousing is to have a low friction surface for the mouse to track on, and I have discovered that the most satisfactory and lowest-friction mouse pads are the ones designed for serious gaming.

For the past several years, my favorite pad by a wide margin has been the SteelSeries 4D gaming mouse pad, a fairly large (although smallish by gaming standards) double-sided pad with one side glossy smooth and the other textured. The hardened plastic surface offers little resistance to mouse movement, especially the textured side.

Now, the rough surface offering the lowest resistance is somewhat counter - intuitive. Superficially, one might expect the smooth side to be the slippery one, but not in this context. An analogy is vehicle tires. On glare ice, the most efficient traction "tread" for a tire would be a completely treadless racing slick. it has to do with contact surface. On the other hand, a textured surface presents a much smaller contact patch, or strictly speaking, a relatively large number of very small contact patches. if the contact material on both surfaces is of a composition that offers little inherent traction, which is the case with both the hardened plastic of these SteelSeries mouse pads and the contact patches on computer mice, then the textured surface will present the lowest friction coefficient.

Since the SteelSeries (formerly SteelPad) 4D mouse pad was introduced about four years ago. SteelSeries has added a whole range of other hard plastic professional gaming pads, one of the later designs being the SteelSeries S&S, which was updated and improved in January 2007.

The S&S pad is about 33% larger than the 4D, and is single-sided with a coarser surface texture than the 4D's textured side, and it's even quicker and slicker. The two mice I use most often are the MacMice Danger Mouse and the ergonomic AirOBic Mouse (formerly Quill Mouse). Both glide across the S&S mouse pad with as little friction resistance as I've ever encountered on any mousing surface. This is especially noticeable and appreciated with the AirOBic I have, which is a very large mouse (although reasonably light) with four relatively small contact pads, and designed to take the weight of your hand and wrist/forearm for low-stress "gripless" mousing. This is generally quite comfortable, but it does make this mouse sensitive to mousing surfaces that offer much friction resistance.

The SteelSeries S&S simply doesn't, and the big AirOBic Mouse really became low-effort when I affixed a set of SteelSeries Glide MS Teflon glide pads, which are self-adhesive and fit the AirOBic's contact pads perfectly. Greased lightning!

The SteelSeries Glide MS pads are actually designed especially for Microsoft's range of optical gaming mice to reduce friction and provide a smoother gliding experience. The teflon feet, when attached to the feet of your mouse, reduce friction between the mouse and the mousepad. This makes the glide of the mouse much smoother, especially when used on mousepad made of a hard material like metal, glass or plastic.

Teflon offers the lowest coefficient of friction (0.1 or less) of any man-made solid material, which makes it the perfect material for this purpose. Glide MS are recommended for use with all mousepads, especially for use with hard mousepads (hard plastic, glass and metal) such as the SteelSeries range. SteelSeries Glide MS pads sell for $4.99 + shipping. More information here:
http://www.steelseries.com/us/products/accessories/glide_ms/information

Unlike the SteelSeries 4D, which came with a separate, soft underpad made out of a "stickier" plastic material that cushions the mousing surface and provides traction to keep the pad from skating around on the desk or table surface, the SteelSeries S&S pad has high-traction material bonded directly to the back surface of the pad. This is a lot more convenient than a two-piece solution.

According to Wikipedia, the first mousepad was designed by Jack Kelley of Herman Miller in 1969, while details of a mousepad designed by Armando M. Fernandez were published in the Xerox Disclosure Journal in 1979 with the description:

"CRT CURSER CONTROL MECHANISM PAD

"To assist the operation of a cathode ray tube pointer 10 wherein a metal ball is rolled on a hard surface, the disclosed pad may be utilized. A resilient, rubber-like material 12 is bonded or otherwise attached to a hard base material 14 which keeps the rubber-like material flat. The base has four rubber-like pads 16 on the opposite side from the resilient material to refrain the pad from sliding on the surface of a table, for instance."

The article notes that By 1982, most users of the Xerox ball mouse were using mousepads, and The Oxford English Dictionary dates the term "mouse pad" to the 25 August, 1983, publication of InfoWorld.

In the development of mouse pad technology, a relatively recent sub-species are "gaming grade" mousepads like the SteelSeries products, available in a wide variety of sizes, materials, and textures to suit the different sensitivity settings that gamers may prefer.

S&S stands for Steel and SK, the latter being Schroet Kommando (SK), one of the world's most well known Counter-Strike teams, designed it. The SteelSeries S&S was developed in cooperation with the legendary SK.swe Counter-Strike team back in 2003 and 2004. SK.swe Counter-Strike won six major international grand-slam titles during that period. The S&S's textured hard plastic surface facilitates performing minimal and extremely precise mouse movements, and is made of a special responsive plastic compound. When you have prize purses worth over $25,000 to be won, you cannot afford to have inadequate hardware.

I'm not a gamer, so I can't really evaluate these mouse pads in the context for which they are primarily designed. I assume that the S&S pad provides superb gaming performance, or it wouldn't be the best-seller in that cateory. But I can say that as I noted above, if you are just interested in optimum mouse performance and user-comfort, it's well worth checking out gaming mousepads anyway. I just don't want to mouse on any other surface any more.

Until I checked out the SteelSeries S&S, I considered the SteelSeries 4D (which remains available) to be the best mousepad I'd ever used, and I still love it, but the S&S is even better. The only downside is the price. While the SteelSeries 4D's 25 dollar tag seems steep enough for a mouse pad, the S&S sells for five bucks more than that, or fifteen buck more if you opt for the fitted nylon sleeve. ON the other hand, these pads are very durable. THe 4D I have with more than three years intensive use on it still looks brand new, and they're also easily washable. Most of us spend a lot of money on our computer systems. Arguably, it makes sense to spend a little more in order to improve and optimize our human interface efficiency and comfort with the powerful and expensive hardware.

Addressing the price issue, SteelSeries points out that all of their mousepads are thoroughly researched, tested and optimized for serious gaming, tested for material quality and suitability, durability, glide, precision and compatibility, all of which inevitably makes the product more expensive than a typical off-the-shelf mousepad.

SteelSeries S&S highlights:
- SteelSeries claims it is most popular hard plastic gaming mousepad in the world
- Includes protective nylon sleeve
- New improved surface released in spring 2007
- Compatible with optical, laser and ball mice

Specifications for SteelSeries S&S:
- Material: Textured hard plastic
- Surface treatment: Coating
- Dimensions: 12,6" x 10,6" - thickness 0,08"
- Size: Medium
- Glide: Smooth

The SteelSeries S&S with nylon sleeve sells for $39.99 + shipping)

TheSteelSeries S&S solo (no nylon sleeve) sells for $29.99 + shipping)

For more information, visit:
http://www.steelseries.com/us/products/surfaces/samps/information

Charles W. Moore

Tags: Hot Topics ï News ï Reviews ï Hardware Reviews ï

Login † or † Register † †