Re: gEDA-user: Trackball at work?

[Shahab Sanjari <sanjari@hrz.tu-darmstadt.de>]

Thank you.
My thinkpad has one of those track points. It is only that scroll wheel
that I miss. otherwise the apart from the index finger, everything else is
in ease.
And you are right about exercises. I think I should do something about
that.

:-)
Shahab.


--------
Shahab Sanjari  (sanjariathrzdottu-darmstadtdotde)




On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, Samuel A. Falvo II wrote:

> On Saturday 26 June 2004 03:53 pm, Shahab Sanjari wrote:
> > Is there anyone there who uses a trackball as a pointing device at
> > work? For more than 2 months, my wrist became really uncomfortable and
> > it started to ache after a few hours of working with mouse. Recently
> > it is aching all the time, and since yesterday, I am keeping it warm
> > with a bandage.
>
> Shahab, I strongly advise you to perform regular wrist stretching
> exercises if this is the case, in addition to whatever other measures
> you are taking to mitigate this problem.  I have very sensitive wrists
> as well, and as a practicer of Aikido and formerly of Yoga, I am aware
> of some wrist stretches that, at least for me, helps out a great deal.
>
> Note that stretching is no substitute for good ergonomics; but it does
> help relieve some of the pain and stress in the wrist.  I stretch
> regularly, sometimes multiple times per day on particularly bad days.
>
> > are still not precise enough, I still need practice. Is there anyone
> > who has come back to mouse after using a trackball and having lost the
> > hope of  making precise movement with it?
>
> I think it's primarily due to the size of the thumb-driven trackballs.
> They're so small that even the slightest muscular jerk will result in
> significantly large enough mouse movements to me annoying.  If they made
> thumb-trackballs with larger sphere sizes, I think that might be useful,
> but alas, they do not.  :(
>
> I used to be a very, very good aim with an Alps Glidepoint (the
> capacitive, flat, trackball-like things you find almost universally on
> most laptops today).  While it does take some practice to get good at
> it, I have been very happy overall with them.  I only wished that they
> made it easier to drag-n-drop with that design.
>
> Another pointing device that I got *very* good results with was the IBM
> Trackpoint (not to be confused with the Glidepoint).  This device was
> basically a rubber pencil eraser coupled to a four-way pressure
> transducer -- thus, essentially a joystick.  The only disadvantage to it
> was that it appeared between the G and H keys (assuming standard QWERTY
> layout), which sometimes interfered with touch-typing.  If only they
> produced trackpoints in large numbers external to the keyboard...
>
> --
> Samuel A. Falvo II
>