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Comment by m463 | Hacker News Reader

I sort of think of left-handed people.

I am right handed, but overused it and switched to a left-handed mouse.

There are basically infinity right-handed mice, but basically zero left-handed mice, most of which are hedged ambidextrous mice.

so looking at office chairs and standing desks and all kinds of ergonomics oriented towards healthy sitting, it seems amazing that there isn't more competition for people who sit more than anyone.

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Most left handed people I know (me included), use the mouse with the right hand. Might be a bubble though, but I never thought to get a left handed mouse, or left handed scissors or most left handed things. There's a few things that really don't work (I play my drumkit with hands reversed), but most things are fine.

I tried using a mouse in my left hand in left handed mode back in the day. Eventually, I got tired of changing the settings on shared computers at home/school, and I realized it wasn't any more or less hard to use the mouse with my right hand. Today, I use a right handed vertical mouse. Interestingly, I play guitar right handed, despite being inspired to play by Kurt Cobain. My girlfriend got me left handed scissors as a joke, but man, they actually feel better.

My sister used to use a neutral mouse, with her left hand, on the left side of the keyboard but in "normal" or "right handed mode". Now she has a laptop with a big touch pad in the middle.

I do what your sister used to do. (Left hand mouse use, buttons left at default).

Even game that way. Started using it that way as a kid, by the time I learned it was possible to switch the buttons that seemed less natural than leaving it as default.

Also made it much easier to use shared computers in school labs and the like.

I am lefty and occasionally use the mouse left-sided when I have right arm injuries. What I don't do is swap the buttons. That way, nothing has to change, I can switch to the preferred side at any time, and coworkers aren't stymied when they need to drive the computer.

A lot of left-handed people are actually cross-dominant or selectively ambidextrous.

Keyboard shortcuts aren't as convenient with the mouse on the left. The most useful ones are all biased to the left of the keyboard. Left Ctrl is also easier to hit reliably.

I would have been left handed when an early childhood injury caused me to switch to right. A few years ago I thought about that and tried re-learning some skills and tasks with the left hand.

It's specific to each task but I can normally get the left handed version as good or better than the right. I am willing to bet most people could do this, you just have to spend a bit of time awkwardly re-learning.

In school for fun when it was boring I many times would do writing exercises with the right hand (like write a line of A's, a line of B's, etc) and after a couple of weeks I got the right hand up to maybe 80% speed and accuracy of the left, but I realized I needed to do constant training to keep it as good as the left (admittedly the left had daily training of many hours due to having to take notes, etc). But it does sound plausible!

Same here.

I felt comfortable with "neutral" mouses that aren't shaped right or left that I could use either with right or left hand

I use dual mice for variety sake.

The Logitech G300s has been solid as a lefty. They used to be cheap enough that replacing them every couple of years (depending on usage) was feasible, but I'm not sure if the market has driven up prices since then.

Sounds like a nice application for 3D printing tbh. Take the electronics from a regular mouse and fit into a left-handed housing with a range of shapes/sizes etc available! Call it "second hand"

At least one guy on reddit did this and is still sending out the files for people who ask: https://old.reddit.com/r/MouseReview/comments/enxzgg/lefty_g...

It seems like a massive pain though. Rebuilding a non-symmetrical mouse the other way would take electronics tinkering as well as 3d printing, and probably a ton of work to get all the connections and tolerances right.

I am left handed, and I use trackpads with my left hand, but I gave up on lefty mice years ago and use an ergonomic one right-handed.

I'd assume the electronics are very modular and probably just clip into place in a single unit. You do need a battery compartment or something though, and the buttons need to fit well. Wheel can come from donor mouse.

Unfortunately they are not. Mouse motherboards are generally shaped like the mouse, i.e. right-handed, and the side buttons are on ribbon cables too short to move to the other side. Impossible to reorient without serious work.

Sounds like someone could buy a bunch of different mice and x-ray them to look for the easiest candidates. Looking for symmetrical-ish electronics, most of all.

Elecom makes a nice left handed trackball. Employers don't often provide ThinkPads, so I usually use a standard mouse on the left side without swapping the buttons.

I switched to an Apple Trackpad and it basically cured my wrist issues that I was experiencing.

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