The mouse on Mac OS X is often too slow, even if you have used the Preference pane to set the tracking speed to the fastest. You can fix this. Start Terminal.app, then type:
defaults read -g com.apple.mouse.scaling
The above will show your current scaling value. To make it faster, do:
defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling 5
You need to re-login for this to take effect.