Personally, I haven't had any problems with moving the IntelliMouse Explorer too fast causing mistracking, despite much much too much
Quake III and
Counter-Strike (the plastic feet on the bottom of the mouse have literally been polished my my mouse pad).
I think a lot of these problems occur because of the surfaces people use, so here are some of the ones I've tried:
- Standard cheapie mouse pad: Not bad. I had problems with the sides of the pad rolling up, but other pads with heavier rubber might be better. It tended to mis-track fairly easily.
- Everglide: a little small, although the big square ones, and Ratpadz are probably fine. I had problems with the red printing on the pad interfering with the red light on the mouse; the sensor couldn't tell the different, and thus tracked really badly over the red areas. Otherwise, pretty nice, very little friction, although the physical motion of the mouse on the pad wasn't very smooth. Probably the best one out of the lot as far as high-speed tracking goes.
- 3M Precise Mousing Surface (3M PMS): Waaay too small. Too much mouse-to-pad friction. Tracked fine though.
- Tea towel: Someone in a forum somewhere recommended this one. I tried it, but didn't like it because it was too rough and bumpy. If you spent the time to flatten it down properly it would probably be ok.
- Paper taped to the table: I used this for several months, and it was quite good because I could take it anywhere without any trouble. However I noticed that the bump on my wrist where it rubs on the table was starting to get very sore and pronounced, so I stopped using it. Very smooth, tracks well at high speeds.
- Pants leg: The ultimate for lazy people. Kinda hard to gauge how smooth it is or how well it tracks, because my leg is rounded. Most clothing is fairly usable.
At the moment, I'm using a cheapie mouse pad, but one with a finer grain and heavier rubber than the normal ones. It's smaller than normal, but turning 90 degrees it's fine. It's extremely smooth and I've never had a problem with high-speed tracking at all.