What happens when you take a heavy mouse (battery-operated wireless perhaps), and use it on a coarse mousepad (such as the Ratzpad GS), for an extended period of time? Worn mouse feet. In fact, they can wear themselves right off.

For those who have experienced worn out mouse feet, you basically have a few options. First, you can just buy a new mouse. Not a great option, especially if the mouse cost over $50 and is in otherwise good shape. The 2nd option is teflon stickers designed for mouse feet. But if the hard plastic originally on the mouse wore off, what makes you think little stickers are going to last? The final option: A quick do-it-yourself procedure to permanently fix the problem.

So what is this “miracle fix”? Basically, you make new mouse feet. What I used was a guitar pick. We have plenty lying around, so I picked a relatively medium sized one, cut it down into little mouse feet, sanded it, cleaned it with rubbing alcohol, and gooped (glued) my new little mouse feet into place. It’s been working fine ever since.

As you can see in the above picture (click it to view a larger version), the new “feet” are blue. Yes, in essence it’s simply plastic glued on to the old ones, but it works well, picks only cost about a quarter, and it’s sure to last years. I wrote a more detailed article about it on Free-Info-Pages.com, but the average person should be able to figure most of it out pretty easily anyway. So before giving teflon tape a try, consider making your own feet out of something a little more durable. It only takes about 30 minutes, costs practically nothing, and will last an extremely long time.