There was an incident today at work from one of my colleague about the mouse pointer being 'jumpy'.

So she was using the mouse like usual, and once in a while the mouse pointer was jumping into hyper-speed from one edge of the screen to another.

Interestingly, like common help asked from a colleague, it didn't happen when I arrive at the 'crime scene'

However, after waiting a couple seconds, it happened!

I asked her to have a look at her mouse pad, and see whether there is (are) some red-ish color in there.

She was puzzled and have no idea what's the relation, as most of our common problem at work mostly related to either hardware or software (and not third-ware by whatever it means).

She lifted up her mouse pad and there was a nice abstract picture of a computer network 'image' that was used by one of computer vendor to promote their products.

It was not much of red colors, but there are a lot of orange colors that look red-ish to me.

I told her that the problem lies because of the optical mouse was using red-LED for its movement tracking. Thus, it needs a proper reflection of the 'image' it sees in order to track the movement and provide the appropriate results on the screen for the mouse pointer. (that's the less-geek-y explanation)

I also aksed her wheter he had experience the mouse pointer being 'stuck' and seems extremely heavy to move. (as if there was 3 tons of chese on top of her wrist that made the mouse pointer unable to move, tadaaaa!!! Aw, c'mon, no such thing!)

Anyway, for the last question, she mentioned that she experienced it a couple of times when using the other side of the keyboard that has mouse-pad-base, which is matte-black (ah ha!).

She was jokingly said, was that causing the mouse to be blind? And I told her, sadly that's true

With the matte-black mouse pad, the common optical mouse couldn't see its own reflective light, thus it literally blinds the mouse. However, this does not apply to the less-matte-black color. Put it this way: if you can't see the reflection of a light on that black surface, then the chance for optical mouse to work properly would be slimmer.

Also, for colored surface, make sure the color is not the same as the optical mouse' LED (the shiny light coming out from the mouse' bottom when you lifted it up). The same mechanism to check applies, except you need to test it with your own mouse' LED light-source.

So, there it goes, I hope this short article helps some of you that wonders why on earth the mouse pointer is either jumpy or stuck.