Surely many of you, if you’ve been in IT for a few years now, will have had one of these mice at some point, and you will fondly (or badly) recall the tedious process of cleaning the inner rollers when the device started to fail. Work well to bring it back to its usual precision. In any case, this type of mouse worked quite well at the time and, despite this, it was replaced by the current optical and laser sensors.
The limits of ball mice
Many of you will say that if these mice ended up disappearing in favor of current sensors, it will be for something, and you are right. Initially, spherical mice had enormous limitations since their operation was based on a she was
This mode of operation had several drawbacks, such as the fact that the the sensitivity was quite limited since it depended on physical elements (the rollers), as well as on the fact that these roller skates They got dirty very often and we had to remove the ball and clean them to get the mouse to work properly again. It was not often that the rollers were damaged, but even so, the moving physical elements had some wear, so their durability was also limited.
Obviously, the sensors that detected the rotation of the rollers at that time were not the most precise either, and all this coupled with the fact that the manufacturing cost of this “tracking” system was much higher than that of the sensors. . time, inevitably leads to extinction.
Could these gaming mice come back?
However, the spherical mice also had other advantages such as the fact that the movements could have an impact. 1: 1 tracking exactly, something ideal to be able to have maximum precision and, proof of this is that in reality “ball” mice have not exactly completely disappeared since many manufacturers continue to release “trackball” models on the market, even if it is true that now the ball is located at the top to move with the fingers instead of from the bottom to move with the movement of the mouse itself.
It is true that the operating mode of these trackball mice is not the same as that of the ball mice of yesteryear, since instead of rollers they directly have sensors that detect the movements of the ball to interpret the movements of the ball. the mouse itself.
In fact, nothing prevents manufacturers from starting to reintegrate the balls into the bottom of the mouse, and although this would have the same drawbacks as the mice of yesteryear, the sensors that exist today are much better … but of course we would lose the great advantage, which is that the rollers provided that true 1: 1 tracking since they were replaced by sensors; And of course, if you have sensors in, why put a ball when you can put the sensor right on the bottom surface of the mouse, which they do now?
In other words, if you are a retro lover and you were hoping that manufacturers would reintroduce ball mice to their catalog, you can say goodbye, because in reality this is something that no longer makes sense today. ‘hui because the technology has been largely outdated and In fact, using a modern optical sensor will give you better accuracy and it is less expensive to manufacture.
