Optical mice are better, yeah. Doesn't mean they can't break though. I have a Logitech, and the buttons started getting sticky after a while. Sometimes when I click, it registers 2-4 clicks on the computer, which is insanely annoying. The mouse wheel is also fairly sucky; scrolling with it sometimes works, and sometimes it'll scroll for a while without anything happening, so it's not very accurate. The little rubber pads on the buttom of the mouse wore off too, and without those pads it no longer slides smoothly across my desk like it used to. It's probably from my using it without a mouse pad though. So optical mice are better, but they're not indestructable. Make sure you get a good one.