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Pointing Stick Keyboard Roundup
An anonymous reader writes "Blogger pettijohn went on the search for the best USB external keyboard with a pointing stick. He found exactly three products that fit the bill in the market, so he bought all three and wrote a proper roundup review."
It's a clit mouse.
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
Reading TFA told me what it is (the little button some keyboards have in the middle which can tilt and control the mouse), but does anyone call it a "pointing stick"?
Funny, I really sought to have somebody play with my pointy stick, but nobody wanted it.
I can see the appeal of having one of these. I always did prefer having a keyboard-nipple instead of a touchpad.
Now, if only someone would build a Wii-knunchuck-like trackball or pointing stick...
" if you’re like me and you love it, "
yeah, and if I'm like the guy on the corner I wouldn't bath.
But I'm not because I'm a rational person. Same applies to the article.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Nah, I'm not that desparate...yet.
(Thinkpad x100e is a joke - "ultraportable" with battery life of a desktop replacement, almost? Plus, overall, the first Lenovo netbook, S9/S10, seems closer in spirit to the style of Thinkpad, to me...just add clit & optimize battery life - with latest Atoms and Pixel Qi screen for example)
One that hath name thou can not otter
>After a chiropractor urged me to...
>chiropractor
Oh dear....
I would be interested in using the Lenovo one for my desktop, that's not too weird/impossible right? (I don't need a numeric keypad, though it wouldn't hurt). Anyone use one in Linux? I figure everything would work as expected, TrackPoint scrolling, etc?
I have the Samsung Q1 keyboard which I chose because of its compactness. I agree that it's not the best quality keyboard around but don't really notice any the problems he cites in his article. A minor gripe I have is that if you have your BIOS setting configured to turn on NUM LOCK automatically on boot, the keyboard goes into numeric keypad mode which you'll need to turn it off manually before you can log in.
I have consistently chosen ThinkPad laptops for the very reason that they had these things. But, after a long period of screen navigation, I would get this wicked blister on my fingertip. I wish they had one that, instead of being a textured nub, was more like the XBox360 analog stick (but smaller).
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
This is actually a pretty good article. Good run down on features and problems with each. I like the Unicomp-style keyboards too much though.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I do have a couple complaints for it though:
Otherwise, its a great keyboard. A bit expensive but worth the money IMHO.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
While I'm glad to see Lenovo get honors for their (IMHO, awesome) keyboard design, I don't understand why the nub/clit/eraser/whatever is ubiquitous among laptop manufacturers. I find trackballs so much easier to use on laptops--particularly since there's no fuzzy-logic-acceleration involved.
it's
if(you're like me && you love it) {
blah
}
not
if(you're like me) {
you love it
}
Parent is insightful, people? Come on.
Does anybody make a small standalone pointing stick that could be grafted into the middle of an ergo keyboard?
I've been a ThinkPad user for over 10 years (I tried a Sony and a Panasonic-- both were lousy machines), and the best feature in my mind is the pointing stick. Touchpads give me terrible wrist/forearm pain, especially when I'm on an airplane or train, because the seating tends to force me into an uncomfortable position. But in these spaces, I can use the pointing stick without a problem.
Sadly, over time, my pointers start to drift to one side. At first, if I take my finger off of it, it will recenter itself. Over time, though, it eventually loses this ability. Is there some kind of calibration tool I need to run, or is this usual wear and tear? It's happened on every ThinkPad I've ever owned, including my first 365CD and my current X61.
btw having it on the g/h keys is the dumbest thing.
Not necessarily. It's in the middle between the two hand-zone. So no crossing over it and no perturbation to the usual haptics.
i.e.: not matter which key a touch-typist is hitting, the typist in never going to have a finger moving over the stick/nipple/clit.
So no way to move the pointer by incident, and no way that typist tries to press it instead of a key, because the the finger-tip "counted" move 3 objects to the right and the finger thinks it's above a key when in fact its above the stick/nipple/clit.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I have always felt people that feel the need to elevate their laptops and use ergonomic keyboards to be prima-donnas.
If you find you're injuring yourself with your keyboard then perhaps we need to re-evaluate our method of typing? How is it we could go so many decades with mechanical type-writers and not 'injure' ourselves? You would think *something* would have come up during WWII at least...
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Does anyone know of a good WIRELESS version? I am looking for wireless keyboard with some kind of track ball/pad/pointy thing built in. Silly to have two items (wireless keyboard plus a wireless mouse). That is just asking for the mouse to get lost, lose it's power, etc.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I love my Microsoft Natural 4000 keyboard except for the truly worthless zoom toggle right in the middle. If they were to replace that with a pointing stick (or even trackball) I would be in heaven. (The back/forward buttons could be left/right click instead.)
Imageboard style "zoom & snark" comments are nice on imageboards, but perhaps you could amplify your comment by stating what's exactly wrong with chiro. You'd make a stronger case AND would be giving a comment more worthy of your +5 insightful.
For instance, you could say things like "the subluxation is the fundamental lesion of Palmer-style chiropractic, is undetectable physiologically except on x-ray, and trained chiropractors cannot consistently identify subluxations on x-ray."
So, it seems this place is the thread to ask -- I absolutely love the nub mouse/trackpoing/whatever, but I also absolutely love a big huge rounded ergonomic keyboard. Has anyone found an ergonomic shaped keyboard that has a trackpoint-style mouse nub?
"Blogger pettijohn went on the search for the best USB external keyboard with a pointing stick."
Is there such a thing as a USB internal keyboard?
and did anyone else envision him poking at various keyboards with a stick?
I was almost as venomously against them as you, until I went to a small Thinkpad (X20, I believe) that had no trackpad at work. I bought a tiny USB mouse to carry with it, because I was sure I would never adapt. Instead, I quickly found myself testing the waters when I was in locations without a good flat surface for the mouse, and I converted within a few weeks. Ever since, getting a trackpoint has been a major feature requirement for any laptop or desktop computer I use. Over the years, I have completely lost any ability to use a trackpad. I disable them on my machines, and when I have to use someone else's laptop with trackpad, I am like a two year old trying to figure out the new device.
It fits very well with my work habits which involve mostly typing and shoving the mouse around once in a while to change focus, select an obscure menu, scroll rapidly, or highlight some text. It's much faster than moving my hands off the keyboard to use a mouse or trackpad. My wrist stays firmly on the wrist rest during all typing and trackpoint usage, departing only for beverage duty. Maybe it is my large hands that make me prefer this... I reach every alphanumeric key on the keyboard without moving the ball of my hands from their home position for typing. I have developed calluses where my wrist bone presses onto the wrist rest since it does get a bit of twist/rotation action while I type.
Thinkpad keyboards have cost me a couple of years of thumb joint pain, because they've an attractive nuisance encouraging me to turn my thumb in odd ways to use their left-hand alt keys.
And unfortunately I've had to mostly give up playing mountain dulcimer because the hand positioning that my teacher uses uses the left thumb a lot (there are tradeoffs between speed, chord options, and hand vs. arm motion) and there's a couple years worth of stuff to unlearn and relearn if I want to do cool stuff again.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
For those of you seeking the One True Keyboard, take note.
What I want is the opposite kind of pointing stick - something like a Wacom tablet that lets me use one hand to point at letters to use as a keyboard replacement. Back when I had a Palm Pilot, it could do that (or use Graffiti), but anything I've seen for the Wacom so far seems to use it as a mouse instead. Is there anything like that out there?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I don't like trackpads. They always register touches when I am typing and screw things up. Turning off tap-to-click helps somewhat, but they are still a pain. Oh and scrolling using the side of the pad never works for me. As much as I'd like the idea, the OS X multitouch trackpads are worse. They are constantly zooming when I meant to scroll, or scrolling when I meant to move the cursor or vice versa. I absolutely hate those things and they are another reason I will never buy an Apple laptop.
The eraser-caps are much nicer. They never move when you don't want them to. They can be very fast and precise once you get used to using them at high sensitivity. The middle button for scrolling is much nicer than any other implementation I have seen on a laptop.
Mice are much better than both for most things to be sure. But I don't like carrying around a mouse with me and the nubs are the best I have used on a laptop. Even on the desktop, if 99% of what you are doing is text, it is nice to be able to scroll and do quick cursor placements without taking your hands off the keyboard.
Is there such a thing as a USB internal keyboard?
How do you think a laptop keyboard connects to the motherboard? I think the point of saying "external keyboard" was to distinguish it from Lenovo laptop keyboards, where pointing sticks are more common.
Well, just about every keyboard picks up a shine when it gets used a lot.
I have this keyboard too and I absolutely love it.
The left trackpoint button has lost its spring because the screw underneath it, that holds the button in place, has started to strip out of the plastic.
I have had this happen to two of these keyboards now.
Good luck finding a way to fix this problem.
The real sorrow here is that they have indeed stopped making them.
Claiming to cure anything by doing an adjustment is exactly what chiropractic "medicine" is. Yes, they are good at helping with certain very specific back problems, but other than that the entire field is woo-woo.
It is, although there have been some minor tuning changes and some general cheapening of the keyboard.
Myself, I actually prefer typing on my EnduraPro to a "real" Model M, due to the tuning changes. (BTW, at least the EnduraPro and SpaceSaver actually have "Model M" molded into the case plastic.)
Reject your pointing sticks, meeses, trackballs, clits, whatever!
Unless you're doing layout or graphics, you don't need a mouse. Just shortcuts. The mouse is a very inefficient interface, IMO.
And before you say web browser, let me say: vimperator.
http://www.guru-board.com/ An extremely configurable keyboard that's planned to come in Q4 2010. It's got clicky/tactile switches, with/without pointing stick, and possibility to change the hardware layout (and possible to switch between a few) so that eg you can have dvorak without messing up with options on the computer. It's pretty hyped, but if it doesn't come out too expensive I really want one.
Blogger pettijohn went on the search for the best USB external keyboard with a pointing stick.
That's a very strange way to search for a keyboard. Couldn't he just use Google, or even go to the store and look with his eyes? Perhaps this article is for blind people, but even they can use Google via a screen reader.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Ah, this is a topic very dear to my heart!
First off, they're not "stick mouse" keyboards: they're either a keyboard clit or a keyboard nipple; calling it a clitboard suffices, if you prefer. :) Everyone I know who likes these keyboards (there are several) calls the little red thing in the center one or the other, or alternatively (in polite company) a Trackpoint.
I've been using these so-called "stick mouse" keyboards for about 8 years now: ever since I got a Model M work-alike at work with one, I've been sold on them.
The "IBM" variant, now made by Lenovo, has become somewhat disappointing in the last couple years. I've got several of the USB Travelmate UltraNAV keyboards: they're kinda pricey for what they are these days. The price hasn't really dropped at all, while the functionality remains roughly the same. The most recent "redesign" changes the key impact tactility fairly significantly, and the other more recent ones have as well. I've had IBM specimens dating from the mid-late 90s up through 2004 or so: they're all pretty much identical in that regard. Lenovo has done a fairly good job so far breaking a "good thing". :( At least the key spacing is still perfect: that's one thing I can't complain about, even as someone with large hands. "Full size" keyboards tend to result in a bit too much wrist and outer hand strain, and I can type significantly faster on the slightly-smaller keyboards.
Ultimately, what it comes down to is not having to reach over and grab the mouse every time I want to navigate a page or application element. Win!
As it stands it doesn't look like I'll be getting another of the "awesome" IBM keyboards. The last one I have (in an older X30) is pretty much worn out - literally. I don't want to know how many millions of times I've pressed those keys: all but the function keys are smooth, the nibs on the keys are worn smooth, and there is literal significant cavitation in half the keys from fingernail impacts.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers