In 1991 I met a fellow Amiga User that had an Optical Mouse that needed a grid mouse pad to work.
Has anyone used one of these?
Yes, I had one, from AlphaData if I recall correctly.
Where they any good?
I was quite satisfied with mine. I alwas had trouble with mechanical mice, collecting dust, then becoming unreliable. Also, the quality of the CBM mice was quite poor - the cheap mouse buttons broke down quite quickly. Microswitches came only with later edditions. It was very anyoning. The optical mouse did not have this problem. Just the left mouse button failed after a year or so when I had to replace it.
It looks like they disappeared quickly.
I could be wrong.
:-)
Well, soon after optical mice based on a sensor and motion estimation entered the market, which put the history of mechanical and the grid/pad based optical mice to an end.