Mouse or Trackball?

Loconut1389 writes "I've been an avid mouse user for years, but lately all of the wrist movements have added up and combined with a desire for some added precision when not using my tablet in photoshop, I decided to purchase a large trackball. Logitech makes a few with a small, thumb controlled ball, but it looked like you'd get a tired thumb and have no added precision. After searching around, it seems that the only large one really available is a Kensington for about $90. Only CompUSA seemed to even carry the kensington in-store (and had none in stock). After ordering one online and using it for a few days now, I don't know how I ever lived with a mouse. The trackball has better precision, less wrist movement, and even gaming is pretty cool/easy with it (can spin it to whip around real quick, etc). All that said, it seems like trackballs have all but vanished except in medical fields (sonograms, etc) and perhaps graphic arts. I'm left insanely curious why trackballs haven't resurfaced now that optical technologies have fixed the main problems of old trackballs (and mice). Do you use a trackball? If so, are you in graphic design?"

Comments

Trackball

[BWJones]

My favorite input device has been a Kensington Turbo Mouse. It's a large trackball, a design I have been using for years going back to the original 1.0. They are great in reducing Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) and allow more precision in control which is important for digital imagery work and image forensics.

For a traditional mouse, Apple's Mighty Mouse is pretty good, but it simply does not have the robust reliability that the Kensington track balls have. For most of the Kensington trackball's history, they used high quality bearings which were nice and robust, but dirt could get trapped in between stalling the cursor movement. Recently with the Expert Mouse however, they have gone to a glass/plastic? bearing with an optical tracking mechanism that is far superior to just about anything else on the market.

It is interesting that the trackball has quite a long history. I first saw them, other than Missile Command ;-) of course, on satellite imagery workstations back in 1990 and had to have one for my Mac systems. Unfortunately I had to endure a mouse with just about all of my SGI systems as the trackballs for those systems were either unavailable or just did not work as well as the mouse of hockey puck and digitizing board.

Re:Trackball

[toad3k]

I've been using logitech trackman marble since I was a pretard (10 years). My first came when my parents bought one of these on a whim for our first computer. I reacted hostile initially because all my experience with trackballs up to that point were crappy wheel based ones.

There are good points and bad points.

Good:
    It has always been as accurate as the best mouse, even before mice went optical.
    The cord never ever gets in the way of your movement, because it doesn't move.
    Doesn't require desk space. My screen is flush with my desk, my keyboard sitting snugly on an open desk drawer.

Bad:
    You can't hope to achieve smooth 360+ degree rotation on an fps. You have to move your thumb at some point.

But the main advantage, and the reason why I will never go back to using a normal mouse is that I can place a trackball anywhere. Before I started this note I was reclined all the way back in my chair with my trackball on my chest navigating slashdot in complete comfort. I tend to use it on my knee alot too.

Also another advantage is no one wants to use it. So no one is using my damned computer when I'm not around. Also the ball is perfect for flinging at your coworker.

Re:Logitech's Marble F/X

[gardyloo]

Forgot to mention that Logitech's driver for them, though, is a piece of shit. Consistently crashes Windows XP, and is outrageously huge. If you look carefully, you can find their old driver versions posted here and there on the web (which actually work, and aren't 45MB downloads).

      In linux, though, I just have

                InputDevice "LogitechMarble" "CorePointer"

    and

  # The following is for the Logitech Marble Trackball:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier "LogitechMarble"
        Driver "mouse"
# Option "CorePointer"
        Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
        Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
        Option "Buttons" "9"
# Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
        Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
        Option "EmulateWheel" "1"
        Option "EmulateWheelButton" "8"
        Option "EmulateWheelInertia" "5"
        Option "Emulate3Timeout" "50"
        Option "ChordMiddle"
        Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
        Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"

in my xorg.conf file. Works perfectly. Wish I could get the Windows behavior to be the same!