downsides to optical mice?

So I'm sick of using ball mice, and how easily they gum up even after you clean them.  i've been thinking of getting an optical mouse

do optical mice have any common problems of their own I should know about?

Hi, I recently purchased an HP Notebook dv6305us because of the rebate offer, of course, it came with Vista, so upon getting the notebook, I formatted it and installed XP Pro. Problem. Upon booting the laptop back up, I found the audio drivers do not work, and several other drivers are missing. The laptop recognizes a handful of unknown and other devices for which it has no drivers. I've checked HP's site for both the Vista and XP drivers for this notebook. I didn't see that they had an audio driver for XP though.

This is what I saw on the device manager for missing drivers:
Base System Device
Base System Device
Base System Device
Network Controller
Other PCI Bridge Device
SM Bus Controller
Unknown Device (? wut)
Video Conroller (VGA Compatible)

Which of the drivers off of HP's site should I download?