I found a hardware solution to this, it's not going to sound great though, but it worked for me.
I found that all optical mice suffer from a kind of blindness when faced with surfaces that do not have sufficient contrast and crucially sufficient variety in the pattern.
It's as if the mouse thinks it's still looking at the same spot if its moved on a surface like this, hence the delayed reaction or lag.
I searched far and wide for a suitable surface and I found a picture of pebbles on a beach worked best as long as the surface of the picture is also matt and not glossy.
This may fix the problem for some, but at least for me the exact same mice and mousepads worked fine in Windows and Ubuntu. It's an OS X software issue.
I found that all optical mice suffer from a kind of blindness when faced with surfaces that do not have sufficient contrast and crucially sufficient variety in the pattern.
It's as if the mouse thinks it's still looking at the same spot if its moved on a surface like this, hence the delayed reaction or lag.
I searched far and wide for a suitable surface and I found a picture of pebbles on a beach worked best as long as the surface of the picture is also matt and not glossy.
I know it's not a tech solution...