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When the mouse hit the scene attached to the Mac, it was an immediate success. There is something about it that is completely natural. Compared to a graphics tablet, mice are extremely inexpensive and they take up very little desk space. In the PC world, mice took longer to gain ground, mainly because of a lack of support in the operating system. Once Windows 3.1 made Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) a standard, the mouse became the PC-human interface of choice very quickly. .
The Optical Mouse.
With advances it mouse technology, it appears that the venerable wheeled mouse is in danger of extinction. The now-preferred device for pointing and clicking is the optical mouse. .
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This Microsoft Intellimouse uses optical technology.
Developed by Agilent Technologies and introduced to the world in late 1999, the optical mouse actually uses a tiny camera to take 1,500 pictures every second. .
Optical mice have several benefits over wheeled mice: .
• No moving parts means less wear and a lower chance of failure. .
• There's no way for dirt to get inside the mouse and interfere with the tracking sensors. .
• Increased tracking resolution means smoother response. .
• They don't require a special surface, such as a mouse pad. .
Although LED-based optical mice are fairly recent, another type of optical mouse has been around for over a decade. The original optical-mouse technology bounced a focused beam of light off a highly-reflective mouse pad onto a sensor. The mouse pad had a grid of dark lines. Each time the mouse was moved, the beam of light was interrupted by the grid. Whenever the light was interrupted, the sensor sent a signal to the computer and the cursor moved a corresponding amount. .
The paddle control is the simplest of the analog input devices. Like all variable resistors, the paddle control varies its resistance, thereby changing the voltage of the input circuit in relation to the movement of the paddle's control knob.