When it died, I just couldn't find another finger trackball of the same type and could not get on with the thumb trackballs of the time, so I reluctantly went back to mice.Īfter a recent bout of carpal, my employers bought me a Penguin from Posturite, which is available in small, medium, and large sizes and is a "vertical mouse" so avoids the twisting of the wrist that exacerbates carpal tunnel problems. It was perfect for fine precision work such as photo editing as well as for gaming (Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, etc.). It had a really large ball (2 or 3" diameter) so you could flick it and it would keep rolling until you stopped it. I used a finger trackball, similar to the Kensington Expert, that came built into a keyboard WAY back in the early 90s and I loved it. What would YOU do in this situation? Ever had to choose? I was picking up some stuff at the office earlier this month and thought about grabbing the Marble just for kicks, but I left it there. And with a KVM switch to share it with the home PC, I'm set. I've been doing a lot of work in Visio this year, and the crude Marble attempt just doesn't work I need zoom (CTRL-scroll) and pan (SHIFT-scroll) more than I need vertical. The M570 became priceless, especially having a scroll wheel. I occasionally used it on the rare day I did WFH. The M570 stayed at home for the family PC.
The Logitec software also had a crude scrolling workaround using one of the extra buttons. and had the work-issued wireless mouse for scrolling work. At the time, I scrolled less - used the keyboard to flip slides, pages, etc. The Marble (wired USB) was by go-to in the office. I have both and have mentioned them frequently. Which is better: the Marble Man or the M570? You find that if you pop the ball out, then wipe your finger over the mounts, tiny little disks of gunk fall off - and if they build up on the sensor lens that can lead to further apparent problems. How long between cleans depends on how mucky your hands are. Grease from your thumb gradually gets scraped off by the ball mounts and you notice a slight resistance building. I opened it up, and I swear the cavity was solid with a greasy black gunk. One time, he was having trouble with his mouse not moving.
His screen would have little pixellated areas because of the juice he'd managed to spray on it, and his keyboard was full of crumbs. He'd eat potato chips, spread butter on bread, peel oranges, everything, and yet his idea of 'cleaning his hands' amounted to rubbing them together when he'd finished eating. We had one guy in the office who ate at his desk and NEVER washed his hands.
:)īack in the day, I used to be the office 'tech assistant' - nothing to do with my actual job, but this was when some of the secretaries were literally in tears over WordPerfect for Windows (6.0a, if I remember) replacing WP 5.2 DOS (if I also remember), and I knew how to use it.
I recommend trackballs to anyone who'll listen. Switched to a trackball in the mid-90s (iirc) and never looked back, it's the first thing I insist any new employer buy me for my operating kit, no-one has refused yet, and if they did, I'd just buy myself a new one and charge it to expenses anyway. Commuting on a motorcycle meant I was constantly using my right wrist (for those who don't ride, the throttle and main braking controls are on the right handlebar), working with a mouse was constant movement of the arm etc etc. I started using them when I realised that my shoulder muscles were aching each evening because I was moving my right arm almost all day, from waking to sleeping. Ironically the best mouse I've ever had was the Microsoft Trackball Optical (20 years ago), the Logitech M570 has just about caught up with it ergonomically. The one advantage a mouse has over trackball is that you can make a mouse slightly smaller, but it still needs far more operating space than any trackball, nullifying that advantage completely. It always confused me that trackballs aren't more widely known about, they should be the mainstream option and the mouse secondary (IIRC they pre-date mice anyway).