Swiss Army Knife user here - the mini chisel on that did an excellent job of stripping roller crud off, and it was oh so satisfying when it came off in a single unbroken (aside from where the blade initially sliced across it) strip.
Whilst I also don't miss the maintenance requirements that ball mice had, I do still miss the mechanical inertia they could provide to pointer movements if you wanted - these days you either have to live with the precise but "dead" movements that optical sensors provide, or suffer various different attempts to implement simulated inertia which are guaranteed to always choose the wrong moment to kick in and send your pointer across the far side of your desktop. There was also something oddly satisfying about the way it felt lowering the mouse back onto the mousepad after relocating it during a particular long pointer move operation, as first the ball made contact and then rose up into position with its weight supported by the pad, whilst the rest of the mouse body remained held slightly airborne in your hand but now noticeably lighter.
This is part of why retro computing using the original hardware is so popular in comparison to using emulators running on newer hardware - there's some very distinct physical attributes (looks, sounds, tactile sensations) to those older systems that anyone familiar with them will instantly pick up on as being missing or not quite emulated correctly on anything other than the real deal.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
