Poll: Which pointing device do you prefer? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: Which pointing device do you prefer?

13 pointssagacity35 comments

Just out of curiosity. :-)

I like the Trackball.

Trackpoint, jacked up to max speed and acceleration, with 3 mouse buttons under my thumbs. Like a CLI, it takes a while to train yourself to fire the mouse pointer to any spot on the screen with just a twitch, but once you do, you never want to take your hands off the keyboard to scratch like a cat in a litterbox again.

Unfortunately, only IBM (Lenovo) makes a good one, and few people train themselves to use it, so it's likely to disappear. People try it for a minute or two and decide that it's terrible. I wonder how they did their first minute on a bicycle....

Nipple. My current laptop doesn't have one, and I really miss it. It's a the top of my list of requirements for my next laptop.

For what it’s worth I spend ages restricting my laptop purchases to Thinkpads and Latitudes for the nipple; ended up resigning myself to Macbook due to OS X and found that I was far more productive on the big trackpad and gestures than I’d ever been with the nipple.

I have both the trackpoint and a multi-touch touchpad on my Thinkpad. I find the trackpoint to be much more productive because I never have to move my hands. Using the touchpad requires squishing my arm in close to my body rather than keeping both hands comfortably extended.

How about using the trackpoint for anything accurate? Surely it falls down? (and by 'accurate' I mean Photoshop/Illustrator, for example)

Nipple mouse. (The red dot in the middle of my ThinkPad keyboard.)

It's called TrackPoint. I got so used to it that now I buy a USB thinkpad keyboard for my desktops too.

There are quite a few names for it depending on the "tone of conversation":

http://xkcd.com/243/

I also like to use the UltraNuv buttons together with the trackpoint (nipple). Trackpoint + the middle button - nothing beats this for scrolling. Except maybe C-V and M-V :)

I also like Track-Point on my ThinkPad. Probably the benefit is that I can use it without removing any of my hands from the keyboard.

We call it cl...r (other part of body).

Depends on application really. I love the big apple trackpads for general browsing, coding etc. A mouse is much better for precise Photoshop work or gaming. Mind you, I tend to use a gamepad for gaming these days. Guess I’ll put a mouse as that’s what I use day to day the most.

I've been looking for a good mouse alternative. I really wanted to like the apple magic trackpad but found it too imprecise for anything but casual surfing/consuming.

I also tried a Wacom Bamboo but wasn't precise enough either and I didn't feel like spending more on a better tablet. The other issue with a tablet is you then have this pen in your hand which you have to either hold while typing or put down/pick up each time you need to use it.

I may give a kensington trackball a try. I've had friends who swear by them.

Apple's touchpads, although I'm still getting used to its Magic Trackpad. Probably there are other good notebook touch pads somewhere, but I have found none so far.

For years, mice have given me shoulder / upper arm pains if I use them for too long.

I was surprised how quickly I adapted to touchpads though... The reduction in time reorienting my right hand from the keyboard to a device a foot to the right and back again is a major win in usability and with a little acclimatisation I honestly find the touchpad more accurate for general GUI work. I edit and retouch photos with it no problems as well - for really heavy work I prefer a pressure sensitive tablet but I can do just fine without. By now, even if the pain issue went away, I wouldn't switch back.

Honestly, there is _one_ thing I've found where a mouse is genuniely better for me than a trackpad - FPS gaming. For that, mice are great (though I can imagine a good joystick would be very good too) but otherwise.... In any case, I've now moved my limited gaming entirely over to consoles. I don't think I even own a mouse any more.

A bit weird, but a RollerMouse Pro (http://www.rollermousepro.com/).

I got it once while fighting a bout of RSI and it's a bit weird but I really like it. I had a mouse next to it for quite a while but after not touching it for a year I'm now all in.

Just switched to an Apple Magic Trackpad after years of wishing that someone would make a giant trackpad. It's everything that I had hoped for.

Me too. The main value of the trackpad is "inertial scrolling" - you can scroll through a web page with a very small finger swipe, and then stop the scrolling where you want with another tap. Much more effective than a mouse wheel.

Logitech Trackman Wheel. The one with the wheel on the side for your thumb. Only available for right-handed people, but great if you're looking to cut down on wrist motion required by mice.

I've owned nearly every model, since starting with an ADB version 13 years ago when I was trying out MKLinux on a NuBus PowerMac.

3M Ergonomic Mouse. Stuck with this after having pain with a mouse, a nipple, a stylus and a trackball. http://www.amazon.com/3M-Ergonomic-Optical-Compatible-EM500G...

Regarding the trackball: I use a "Kensington Expert Mouse" highly recommended!

I agree, it's wonderful! Totally worth the price... I've had mine for several years now, and I've had to get a replacement because the first one died. It was in warranty, and it was replaced by support with no hassle at all. No cross-ship, no return shipment at all, just 'peel off the serial code, then trash it'.

None. I'm not a pointy type, I much prefer navigating with the keyboard.

Browsing included?

yeah, use vimperator [http://vimperator.org/vimperator]

Or conkeror, if you prefer Emacs bindings.

Quick tip - the vimperator team had an internal disagreement and both of the lead devs split. The fork, pentadactyl, looks like it's under much more substantive development. http://dactyl.sourceforge.net/pentadactyl/

Yes. ezbl (emacs + uzbl) works pretty darn well without a mouse.

(I DO have a mouse, and use it when absolutely needed, but thankfully, such cases are fairly rare)

I completely agree. For years now I've been working on using the mouse less and less and the keyboard more and more up to the point now that I hardly ever use the mouse (a couple of months ago I sat down and used a public terminal for 25 minutes before I discovered that somebody had stolen the mouse).

Up to now I've been using conkeror for my browsing need (and w3 in the terminal when following links in email from wanderlust in emacs) since emacs is my OS of choice. However I'm now in the process of converting to chrome. I found out that with the help of some extensions and a little bit of scripting I will be able to have a chrome almost as keyboard driven as conkeror and finally be able to use some extensions I have sorely missed in conkeror (biowalled2browser, readability, etc) and that most google products work fine without having to write modes for them (nice since many of googles products are rather keyboard driven by nature)

Why do I do this? For one I hate wasting time, and I hate wasting screen real estate. My computer should be a tool that helps me get tings done as fast as possible, not something beautiful to look at. The more use of GUI and/or mouse the slower one works. If you can to everything from the keyboard, and _know how_ to do it from the keyboard, you can work much faster than when jumping back and forth between the keyboard and mouse or other pointing device.

But I take it one step further. Being all about efficiency I don't want to have to move my hands much either. I therefor strive for using and/or creating setups where ones hands never have to leave the asdf-jkl; position of the keyboard. Thus I don't use enter (C-m or C-j), I don't use arrow keys, and avoid at all cost using any keys that are not reachable without moving my hands from the home location on the keyboard.

To sum up: Basically I'm a keyboard and efficiency geek ;)

I'm in a similar position, except that instead of adapting my keyboard-use to the average keyboard, where the enter key is out of the normal finger path, I bought a TypeMatrix 2030, where the enter is in the middle: I can reach it without moving my hands, easily.

Reading your post on the other hand, woke up my urge to switch back to my old window manager. ratpoison, here I come! (Though, I do wonder if I even need a window manager.. I could just control everything from Emacs)

Fantastic. There are others out there :D

I've actually been planning to get a TypeMatrix one of these days, but I'm planning on remapping the enter-key in the center to ctrl.

Personally I use the stump window manager because it's lisp and I can control it from Emacs using slime. I could however almost do without. All I use stumpwm for is a placeholder for a terminal with multiple nested screens and conkeror. So switching between those two windows is all I normally use stumpwm for.

On my (frankenstein) desktop at home, I use a Logitech G5 mouse. At work, I use a MBP and have become quite fond of the touchpad.

Touchscreen anyone? And i dont just mean iPads, i mean touchscreen monitors etc.

Mind control - haven't tried it, but it could become huge...

My finger

Reply on news.ycombinator.com