Getting Used to Trackballs
October 20, 2008 by Greg
At least once a month I spend an extended weekend in Oklahoma City with my long distance girlfriend as she works through a 3 year residency. Given that I’m not privileged with monthly 4 day weekends, I’ve been slowly setting up a secondary home office in her apartment. Looking to equip my secondary laptop docking station with an above standard pointing device, I found my way to the dark side of mousing, the trackball.
Inspired by a Lifehacker post summarizing reader favorite mousing options, I was reminded of a dormant motive to start using a trackball. Trackballs, aside from an inherit geekiness factor, also carry with them a few other benefits like limited desk space required and reduced risk of motion injury. Also, anything that tosses up this multi-decade interest I’ve had with computers helps keep things fresh.
After my first weekend of use, I think I know what delirium tremens feel like. The dexterity in my thumb is just not there to allow a gentle maneuver of the side mounted trackball of my Logitech Trackman Wheel Optical. While I can get around the screen, moving, highlighting, resizing, or any other fine tuned task, my hand starts to shake uncontrollably as I brute force mental control over my often delinquent fine motor skills. I assume this will only take time, but after just a few days, with just an extended weekend once a month, I am realizing I may be in for some work.
I’m tempted to get a trackball for my home office as well as my work. Anyone else trackballing?
I wish they would remake the Logitech Trackman Marble FX, I had one of these back in college, and it was a fantastic track ball that allowed you to use your thumb but also the rest of your fingers. It was much larger than most other track balls and provided lots of control. It also had a button that you could press that would lower the sensitivity of the trackball for a minute or so so you could do just work in a small area easily.
Seems like since old ones are going for $200+ on Amazon you’d think they’d remake them.
definetly a huge fan of my Kensington Expert Mouse. been using this exclusively for about 5 years now. about 2 years ago i upgraded to the optical one, which is awesome because of the optical vs. the old rollers. plus the scroll wheel is actually a ring around the ball itself. and the motion that yuo use to move the cursor feels familiar enough to mouse use because you use your pointer/middle finger. as opposed to stressing our your thumb life some options require.
Goat,
I think I’m going to give one of those a try. I also want to try one of those logitech revolutions…
Switching to this cheap dell mouse makes life barely worth computing for.