With the proliferation of laptops with built-in trackpads and optical mice that can mouse over just about any surface, not many people think about the surface they use their mouse on.

Things aren’t always as they appear.

When metal-surfaced mouse pads started to make their appearance, we got a lot of requests to start carrying them. Based on a number of reviews and brand requests, we chose a popular manufacturer and started working with them.

Unfortunately, the quality left much to be desired. Scratches on the top surface were the norm, and I even saw one with severe bands of discoloration on a supposedly “gray” surface. More disturbing, though, were the rough chunks out of the edges of many of the pads. One of our IT department staffers even managed to cut a finger open on one of them.

“Okay,” we thought, “maybe this was just a bad batch.” So, we contacted the manufacturer.

“No,” was the reply to our inquiry, “those pads are 100% salable, and of our highest quality.”

I’m not an engineer, but I have countless hours of experience working with precision-cut metals; back before I became “OWC Chris S.”, I worked at my family’s suction filter business. I won’t bore you with the details, but one of my jobs was checking in fittings that we used in these filters. If we’d received parts with this level of relative quality, the whole batch would have been rejected and sent back. As I see it, if it isn’t good enough to stick in the oil tank of a backhoe, it isn’t good enough for someone’s desktop.

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