There are two main advantages to optical mice. It's easy to hit small targets with less work. Second, there's no mouse ball, and no cavity, so they're very easy to keep clean. That tends to be tedious. I've had the Microsoft optical mouse for a couple of weeks now, and I haven't had to do any cleaning.
Smokers report they no longer have to clean every day.
The wheel works fine, the mouse works fine, and as far as I'm concerned I'll never buy a conventional mouse again. I like the shape, too. In those days, I was a great enthusiast for SyQuest high-capacity drives. On the other hand, that requires a network. Large-capacity cartridge systems make sense for some purposes.