Laptops all moved from nipples to trackpads a long time ago, surely if analog sticks could provide higher resolution then that wouldn't have happened, or there would have been a move back?
I actually have no idea how people can use touchpads. You need a huge one to be able to go corner-to-corner in one swipe and still have reasonable accuracy.
I mean, given the option of a physical mouse, I will always prefer that over both nub and track pad -- and the physical mouse requires the most movement away from the keyboard (of course, to avoid all three mouse input methods I use keyboard shortcuts when possible).
Anyway, my reasons for preferring the nub are:
* Less movement required on the actual input device. Just a slight tilt of the finger can move the mouse cursor from anywhere to anywhere else.
* Higher accuracy. This one may be subjective, only personal applicable, and/or biased, but I think the nub just makes it so much easier to navigate compared to the touch pad.
I use the nub on my thinkpad, but only because Lenovo's touchpads are truly woeful.
I would tap and drag for little and precise movements, swipe for fast movements, and press the button for default movement. With some training, it can become pretty natural.
I have always usually done this, but also remapped the trackpad to be entirely a "scrollpad"
Yep, and you can also click and release the middle mouse button, then separately mouse up or down. Interestingly, I have only been able to get either this OR the press then scroll behavior you described working on Windows (by toggling a setting), but in Linux you can have both enabled at the same time.
I do use a tiling window manager and bindings like Vrome/Vimperator, so my use case is probably atypical. My mouse usage is limited to when I deem it absolutely necessary; I hate physical/mental context switching, and bringing my hand from keyboard to TrackPad/mouse/whatever is a huge context switch.
I would use it so much more if it was between H and J.
How do you stretch your finger towards the middle of the keyboard with no issue? Stretching just to type a letter is fine for me (think Y, H or B), but staying on the TrackPoint is hard.
Possibly a shocking statement here but I went from a top end 2010 MBP to a 2009 T400 running windows 7 and am much happier as a whole, even though I have my head in UNIX machines a lot.