What a joke. Before you start believing whatever some "research" tells you, try finding things out on your own. Go do this: get a clock and tap your finger on your desk five times during the duration of one second to get a feel for how much 200ms is, then imagine that delay on your mouse cursor--your computing experience would be unbearable.
I can read the actual paper, actually, and as they said, 200ms was the high end for mousing tasks, and they think that 150ms or so is a more likely time. I'm willing to stick with the 100ms time that they cite as a "rule of thumb" (which is also based, loosely, on actual CHI laboratory research.)
As for my problem, the delay is so miniscule that I couldn't tell you exactly how long the delay is (I'm estimating based on much experience) as it's more of a sensation rather than an enumerable delay but there is most certainly a noticeable delay.
Now that I'll believe. I'll believe you could sense a delay down to about 50ms or so, actually. But 30ms is too close to, say, LCD refresh time (14-18ms) and is lower than, for example, the frame rate of a theater projector (41.7ms) so I very much doubt you could be quite that sensitive. If you were, daily life would be a chore. 30ms just smells like you pulled it out of some unsavory bodily orifice
I can look at the mouse, move it, and I can see the cursor on the screen in my peripheral vision is not moving instantaneously as it does on any other PC--whether it be Windows, Linux, or, ironically, Unix and Irix.
But I can see people would rather get used to this problem than fix it or create a stink and most are just oblivious to this problem in the first place (it is a problem that has plagued every 10.4 iMac I've tried. I haven't tried other Macs for this problem) from the lack of documentation of this problem on the net. Thanks for your replies, but this seems to be a dead end.
It looks about that way. But other than "get used to it" or "try another mouse" (maybe a trackball...they always seemed snappier to me personally) there's nothing much I can suggest.