A trackball test.

[Infinite north]

I have very limited use of any other pointing device beside mouse usage. due to RSI I have been looking for some alternatives. I recently purchased a microsoft trackball explorer and an industrial trackball for a possible kinesis mod. the design of the MTE is not perfect for me so it doesn't really work and I am planning on reselling it and the industrial trackball has a hard time drawing circles. the issue with the industrial trackball is better summed up to say that it does not handle diagonal movement well. it's internal design is similar to this.



If I go into paint and try to make circles with it they look like this.



The MTE makes fine circles, they come out like this.



So I am wondering what kind of results others get with their trackballs.

[Rajagra]

Looks like the curse of acceleration. Or the industrial trackball might need some breaking in before it works smoothly.
Logitech Trackman Marble result:


I'm not good at drawing. We need to enlist this guy to do the tests:

[Voixdelion]

wtf- there are really contests for such things?   Woah. Guess I'm not quite as geeky as a I thought.... but I think that it may indeed be an acceleration issue:  Most of my circles looks the same via my KEM or my pen tablet, but they start to look squarer as the mouse speed increased.  The pink is the worst at the highest setting.   I couldn't tell if the circles were smoother with fine tuning at a curve or not, but I did notice that the slower the tracking, the rounder  as opposed to square whether the tuning was curved or not.  And the pink was just as square via tablet or trackball...  All the green is via tablet, and the rest is mostly (almost all) trackball...  Actually I think my hand circles are more squarish... however it should be noted that this is entire page is much rounder than the first attempt which I had saved as bmp (too large) and i can definitely say there is notable benefit in practice from the first...