Rhodia Clic Bloc Mouse Pad/Note Pad - 7.5" X 9" - 30 Sheets

I simply love these. As a travel accessory, this pad is perfect. I'm not a big fan of touchpads, so I use a mouse with my laptop. Even with an optical mouse, not all coffee house table/hotel desk/general flat surfaces are necessarily mouse-friendly, so a note pad disguised as a mousepad is just brilliant if you want to pack lightly - laptop, this pad and a pen or pencil is all I need. I just push the mouse over a little when I want to write, and pull the top sheet off if I need to see what I've written while still using the mouse.

The quality of the paper itself is excellent, very nice with fountain pen ink (I use Platinum Preppies as my "everyday" pens). I just ordered more of these, so I thought I'd take a moment to do a review.

Probably worth trying once, but I didn't get along with it.

Concept-wise, this is a great idea: combine two staples of the average work surface, and get rid of a bit of clutter. Execution-wise it's perfect too: the paper is very nice (and I normally don't like either bright white paper OR squared paper, and this is both), it's great for fountain pen use but not hostile to pencil, the pad is well-contructed with glue on two consecutive sides so that it all stays together well but is still easy-peasy to tear off the top sheet, and the mouse works perfect on it.

But in practice, it didn't do it for me. The mouse was always in the way, both when I wanted to write and when I wanted to go over the notes. So I'd remove the mouse, but then I'd be stuck without a mousing surface, which I need because my desk is shiny. The size was also an issue: it's too big for quick notes-to-self, but not suitable for more extensive note-taking as it's meant to live under the mouse. So I always ended up sectioning off the notes by drawing a frame around them, then tearing bits by hand to take a phone number or errand list with me.

But I still think it's worth trying, especially if you are short on space and trying to reduce the number of things with a permanent place on your desktop, to leave more room for notes and papers for things you're currently in the middle of. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you're gonna do a mouse pad/notepad combo, this is the way to do it; it is just probably more of a niche product than most notebooks and notepads.