Weirdest thing happened to my Ratpad!

So, I have one of the original Ratpadz I bought back in ~2000 or so when they were first sold. Its the same kind that now is called the XT.

It's served me really well for the last 11 or so years.

I came home from work today and found that my mouse (Logitech G500) was making a horrid scraping noise against the ratpad, which was really odd since it was nice and smooth the night before, and and the mouse and ratpad had been left alone on the desk since the night before.

I spent a good 10 minutes examining my mouse trying to figure out why it was suddenly scraping. No luck. All the pads are intact, a little sign of wear, but nothing particularly bad.

Then I noticed that my ratpad was warped. High in the center, low on all for sides, making it a little mini mound.

I spent a few minutes putting all my weight against it on the edge of my desk (these things are tough) and now I seem to have bent it back to a semi normal state

I'm just struck by how weird the experience was.

How can it - all of a sudden after 11 years of use - suddenly warp while untouched overnight enough to cause scraping? How does that happen?

Anyway, it seems to work now, and I'm happy

I'm guessing it has been warping slowly for quite some time and it finally warped enough to affect your user experience (hence you noticed it).

GotNoRice said:

I'm guessing it has been warping slowly for quite some time and it finally warped enough to affect your user experience (hence you noticed it).

Click to expand...

Possible.

I'm kind of surprised that the center warped UP. That's where I keep applying pressure down

Gremlins did it.

Zarathustra[H];1037831522 said:

So, I have one of the original Ratpadz I bought back in ~2000 or so when they were first sold. Its the same kind that now is called the XT.

It's served me really well for the last 11 or so years.

Then I noticed that my ratpad was warped. High in the center, low on all for sides, making it a little mini mound.

Click to expand...

This happened to mine as well! I Also bought it back when it first came out (lost my [H] profile from back then dammit).

It served me very well playing counter strike all those years.

Well, I tried bending it back and I have gotten it to the point where part of it is usable, but no matter how much I adjust it, I can't return it back to having a fully usable pad.

I guess getting 11 years out of a mouse pad isn't bad, though I am a little saddened that my original (with the silver ratpadz.com logo in the top right corner, now mostly worn off) is no longer going to be my primary mouse pad.

I ordered another one off of ratpadz.com. with a little luck this one will ge as good as the first, and i won't need another mouse pad until 2022 (if we still use mice then)

On a side note, the ratpadz.com website seems a little out of date. it references the GS all over the place, but it doesn't appear to be sold anymore. The front page says the XT is $24.99, but at checkout its $19.99 with free shipping.

The "buy" page links several well known retailers to buy the pad if you don't want to buy it from the site, but they are all out of stock.

I hope Kyle isn't planning on shutting down the mouse pad business...