I don't care much for the optical mice myself, just because of the responsiveness in games.
Try moving the mouse left and right. Works right? Now speed it up. Keep speeding it up. Whoop! mouse pointer all over the place! Scared the hell out of me in quake 3 when I found that out.
I used to use a old ps2 2-button microsoft mouse back in my quake 1 days. It had a broken roller, and I used it to do tricks, like to spin around a million times real fast on a drop, or to spin around once, before capping someone. Had this technique where I would kick the mouse to the left, then lift the left hand side of the mouse up, letting the ball spin freely, before i dropped the mouse back down. God damn good with it too. I almost cried when I pulled the ps2 plug off of the wire....
Should have buried it. Made quite a few of my friends laugh their asses off with it. (none of them could beat me though.
)