geekhack Community > Input Devices

Transition to trackball - how long?

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el_murdoque:
Okay. It took me about 10 days.

What I like a lot is that I don't need to move my hand. Also the vertical scrolling is pretty nice.
The big, proud ball design is great. You can use a lot of different methods to roll the ball around.
As expected, a mouse is more precise when it comes to clicking really small stuff (Photoshop).

The three things that really threw me off are:
1. The clicks. You need a lot of force to click. I understand that this is because a part of your hand rests on a part of the button, so if you make it light, you'll click a lot by accident. I like a light click, however.
2. The number of buttons. I am accustomed to 5 buttons. Left click, middle click (Linux user), right click and back+forward. The Slimblade has only four buttons, and I'm stunned how much I use the forward button.
3. Horizontal scrolling. I use a Logitech MX Master in my office. That lil thumb wheel is really handy with spreadsheets. Navigating to the horizontal scroll bar and pulling it around with the trackball is not as much fun.

tebla:
I use a Kensington Orbit as my main pointer. For me, I'd say it was a few days of it being distractingly different and difficult, about another week of it still feeling weird/more difficult to use than a mouse but able to be productive mostly normally. After a month it had totally clicked for me and felt completely natural. That was a couple of years ago and haven't used a standard mouse on my rig since and don't think I'd ever switch back to one.

MelonBred:
was using the MX Master series for the longest time, but moved to the Elecom EX-G pro a few months ago. It only took me about a day to get used it, but a few days to get the dexterity in my thumb to move the cursor exactly where I wanted it to go. Really loving the trackball life though.

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