Viper's Lair has posted an optical mouse comparison
Optical mice did have some advantages though. In general, their overall usability was better than the ball mice they were upgraded from. The big selling point though was the fact that there were no moving parts, more notably, no ball. Why was this such a big deal? Ball mice get dirty, and when it gets to a specific point of, erm, dirtiness, the performance scales downwards. Optical mice never suffered this problem, hence performance stays even.
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