A conventional optical mouse works much like a digital camera. It takes pictures of your mouse mat and tells your computer what the mouse is doing by matching the changes between the pictures it has taken.
No idea how the laser works, but it takes higher resolution pictures and so in theory should be more accurate, but after reading the thoughts of Gary Krakow over at NBC this improvement seems negligible. Probably because our current level of optical mousing technology has reached a universally satisfactory level.
I won't be buying a MX 1000 however because:
- It's wireless (I will only remember that when the battery runs out).
- It's one of those mice that will make my hand sweaty because of it's molded body.
- Too many buttons means I will keep telling my computer to do things I don't want it to (I had an MS Explorer mouse once, so I have experience with this).
