Gel mouse mats and keyboard wrist rests

Gel and memory foam are rapidly making in-roads into a range of product applications where support or padding is required.

Previously this has been in the sleeping and seated product arena, but now the world of computing is seeing the large scale introduction of these materials.

Two ideally suited areas for these materials are in the application of a projecting wrist support for a mouse mat and a wrist elevator/support for a keyboard.

In both cases these products already exist, but their manufacture has been utilising more conventional foam materials. Even so, gel appears to be ideally suited to such applications with is mouldable and cool-to-the-touch feel, whilst memory foam offers similar contouring properties, but with its characteristic slow recovery foam.

As ever, manufacturers have been quick to capitalise on the interest in Gel and visco elastic foam and there are many gel mouse pads and keyboard wrist rests already in stores and online retailers. For some reason, the memory foam seems less popular at present, but this will no doubt be corrected over time and with more marketing.

Here is a url that will illustrate an example of one of these products, http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=46845, in this case a gel keyboard rest.