The XTrac RipperXXL Mouse Pad: It's Giganormous!
Mouse pads, by and large, are not something that even the most dedicated computer user thinks about very much.
Not so in the gamer community, where even the slightest chance that something is going to allow them to frag someone else online a split-second earlier is coveted like a hoard of Diet Coke on a desert island.
Me, I'm not much of a gamer (until lately - curse you, Oblivion!) but I do spend a lot of time pushing pixels around on a Photoshop canvas or trying to squeeze another laugh, sigh or shriek out of some video edit in Premiere Pro, so my little cursor flies across dual 21-inch widescreen Dell monitors a lot, sometimes to the point where my little Logitech laser mouse falls completely off the edge of the pad. What I needed was a big pad. A monster pad. The pad to end all pads.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the XTracPad RipperXXL, one yard of smooth mousable surface.
This isn't a mousepad so much as a spongey, mousable surface you place across your desk and turning the entire surface - or as much as practical - into one giant mouse pad. And let me tell you, it has changed my life for the better. The surface is jet black, which I heart very much since it matches my monitors and keyboard and mouse and makes it all look so high-tech 007 cool that sometimes I think I'm searching The Net like Sandra Bullock trying to evade Dennis Miller, or Angelina Jolie as a hacker with 'tude, even though I am a slightly overweight middle-aged freelance web site designer. That's how cool this thing is.
In addition to it's flat black surface area, XTrac includes their "Mad Tape," which is this strip of slippery stuff you apply to your little mouse feet to allow that thing to slip across the surface like shit through a goose, as they say. I suppose for gamers that's another plus, for me I didn't actually like it. There's speed and then there's ludicrous speed. I like a little control.
Four stars out of five, because it attracts cat fur almost as easily as it attracts your mouse's eye, though if I could convince my cat that the keyboard is not a place to sit, it would help. $35.00 at PCXmods.
