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geekhack Community => Input Devices => Topic started by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 09:15:19

Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 09:15:19
[Sorry for the cross post - meant to be in this one]

Since Ripster is not hot on PM and there maybe other Trackball experts around...

How would you compare the CH DT225 vs the old Kensignton Expert Mouse?

CH DT225 (http://www.trackballworld.com/40-811.html)
(http://www.trackballworld.com/media/products/ss_size1/40-811.jpg)

Expert Mouse
(http://mineko.fc2web.com/box/tb-room/items/res/kensington-expert-mouse5/mainimg.jpg)

I've got two Kensigntons EM like the picture above. The first one was from the first generation with a detachable cable and a inherent design flaw. The second (second generation) was sent as a replacement and came with a fixed cable. The Kensington had a 5 year warranty. The one with fixed cable still works and look like NEW after over 10 years of constant use.

I feel like spitting another 200$+ and would like to know how the CH compares with the old ball bearing based Kensington Expert Mouse.
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 09:44:17
Quote from: ripster;334822
I'm not hot on PM?

What did you expect?
Show Image
(http://img.youtube.com/vi/0WoBfZYegac/0.jpg)


Somebody roll that Expert Mouse (the old one) and give me DPI numbers here so I can publish a comprehensive TrackBall Wiki. (http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?17352-Kensingtons-DPI-Sucks-Donkey-Balls)

Trackballs are the Rodney Dangerfield of the Computing World - they get NO respect!

 
Let me search my dumpster and see if I can pull the specs. From my dusty memory and please "DO NOT QUOTE ME ON THIS" but I think the old EM was like 300 or 400 dpi.

That's a good comparison point… Thanks, for the humble use I make of it, I never had a dpi issue with the EM and this alone wouldn't warrant the 200$.

If I was really in need of a new trackball, I will go with the CH over the new Kensingtons any time. I HATE the micro "space age" red balls they now use to roll the ball instead of the bearings.
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 10:10:51
Quote from: ripster;334848
Be better if you just rolled the ball following the instructions in the link than going by memory.


Can you remind me where the heck is the RS232 port on a modern computer? -> Searching dumpster for Serial<->PS2 adaptor

Meanwhile at Kensington
   Your question has been received. We will respond to your inquiry within 24 hours. Thank you.

To access your incident, click below:
 
Incident Number: W007456-042111
Summary I have a old Expert Mouse 5.0 Model #64215 And I would like to know the detail specs of this trackball. At very least, I'm interested in its DPI
Product:  Trackball
Support  Group: Technical Support
Date  Created: 4/21/2011 8:04:34 AM
Last  Updated: 4/21/2011
Status Unresolved
Port:  PS/2
Serial  Number: 97534310K
Operating  System: Windows XP SP3
Software  Version: MouseWorks 6.2.x
Other  Hardware  

Thank you for your interest in Kensington products.

Kensington Computer Products Group
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 10:28:43
Quote from: ripster;334848
Be better if you just rolled the ball following the instructions in the link than going by memory.


Lets forget donkey balls and DPI for a second. What else can you say about the DT225?
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 11:16:19
Ok found the rs232<->ps2 adaptor.

Quote from: Ripster

   So help me out a bit by posting your results.  This MAY shame Kensington into doing something about it.

  • Turn off any Kensington software
  • If in Windows crank the mouse speed to 6/11.  This turns off interpolation
  • Use a sharpie to put a dot on the ball (don't worry, it rubs off easily)
  • Roll the ball horizontally from one end of the screen.  SLOW AND STEADY or you'll trigger built in acceleration.
  • Post the number of revolutions it took, your horizontal screen resolution, and your OS.
[/SIZE]


Ok wait a second - Turn off any Kensington software?

If I turn off all NVIDIA or AMD/Radeon software on my latest and greatest GPU, Windows cranks up a blistering 640x480 display. Does it mean that's what the GPU is capable of?

I don't think this is a reliable procedure for testing what the good old EM can do. The early drivers had command line parameters, I can clearly picture the baud rate and I think there was some for dpi as well. Shame I didn't keep the old Mouseworks versions. I can only go as far as 5.1 and it no longer got the command line parameters.

This thing is using a early Optical technology. Kensington was probably state of the art back then. What was the best DPI ball park (pun intended) back in 1993ish?
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 11:52:30
Quote from: ripster;334928
Of course it's a reliable procedure.

I came up with it.


:-) With all due respect sir, allow me to challenge it.

Now what else than the high dpi and quality bearings can you say about the DT225?
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 12:01:57
I've read your DT225 thread
(http://geekhack.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=11120&stc=1&d=1276622469)

I wonder if current DT225 use the same optical design.
From what I recall (I don't feel like ripping apart the old EM again) the optical wheel had radial lines instead of little holes as above
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 12:32:49
Quote from: ripster;334945
I'll be updating the review with new pictures and more detail.

Once you give me the number of times it takes to roll the Expert Ball.

I'll take whatever OS. NeXTstep.  MS Bob.  Cobol.  Just make sure it's set at the OS default.  Native monitor resolution (although I don't know if it makes a difference - haven't tried THAT one yet).

 
I think you didn't get my point with the GPU analogy. Default/compatible OS mode doesn't mean best performance results. You must run the proprietary drivers with specific parameters to get the most of the device. Unfortunately, I can't find the Kensington drivers accepting user defined parameters for that vintage trackball. Even if I did, I don't know if the DOS/Win95 drivers would have worked for 2000, XP, VISTA or Win7
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 12:56:00
Question for you ... How do you define DPI on a mouse or a trackball for that matter?

For me, it's the number of increments the device is able to detect while rolling the ball on one linear inch.
Baud rate is also a factor because if you roll it too fast, you might skip some increments.

I think it would be better to set the trackball at its highest speed using the Kensington drivers/software and then measure the minimum ball mouvement required to make the cursor move.

For the experiment, I would use a properly fixed micrometer to operate the ball
(http://www.hellopro.fr/images/produit-2/4/8/5/mitutoyo-micrometre-de-profondeur-digimatic-655584.gif)

BTW, I think using the lowest resolution possible on the monitor may even help to detect the movement.
Or even better if you are equiped to actually sniff the device output traffic on the RS232/PS2/USB port.

EDIT: There you go... Just found a USB sniffer (http://www.pcausa.com/Utilities/UsbSnoop/default.htm)
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 13:37:18
Quote from: ripster;334977
CH trackballs have very low dpis.  Just finished some testing.

What were you saying?


Dunno I think I fell asleep. Was I talking in my sleep again?
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 14:01:41
Quote from: ripster;334995
Sounds like you're not going to help build a DPI wiki.

I'll be posting results in other threads.

Bye.

 
Maybe not, but ignoring my comments about your protocol will not help you either.
What's the point of making a wiki based on inaccurate/unreliable results?

I guess there are no rules for information accuracy in a wiki. Regardless of the result, having fun during the process is the most important.

Anyway, I'm no rocket surgeon but the couple of ideas I proposed in brainstorming mode were not totally retarded.

So as the say… Have fun

:-)
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 14:14:21
This guy seams to know what he is talking about
http://home.comcast.net/~richardlowens/OpticalMouse/#resolution (http://home.comcast.net/~richardlowens/OpticalMouse/#resolution)

One section got my attention:

   Resolution (counts/inch)

The resolution of the mouse is determined by the optical properties of the focusing lens and the physical size of the image sensor. The mouse resolution is then further modified by the driver software on the computer, where the sensitivity of the mouse can be decreased by ignoring very small movements or increased by jumping more than one pixel on screen even though the mouse only moved one pixel on the desk.

The optical resolution of the mouse is usually given in CPI (counts per inch), but can also be given in pixels per inch or (somewhat erroneously) in DPI (dots per inch). Just keep in mind that this is how many optical sensor pixels per inch the camera sees, not how many screen pixels the pointer moves per inch of mouse movement.

The main advantage of higher resolutions is that the minimum physical distance needed to register as a mouse movement goes down. Usual mouse resolutions are 400 or 800 CPI.

Would have been nice if The stats had included our trackballs too.
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 14:59:51
Quote from: BucklingSpring;334860
Can you remind me where the heck is the RS232 port on a modern computer? -> Searching dumpster for Serial<->PS2 adaptor

Meanwhile at Kensington
   Your question has been received. We will respond to your inquiry within 24 hours. Thank you.

To access your incident, click below:
 
Incident Number: W007456-042111
Summary I have a old Expert Mouse 5.0 Model #64215 And I would like to know the detail specs of this trackball. At very least, I'm interested in its DPI
Product:  Trackball
Support  Group: Technical Support
Date  Created: 4/21/2011 8:04:34 AM
Last  Updated: 4/21/2011
Status Unresolved
Port:  PS/2
Serial  Number: 97534310K
Operating  System: Windows XP SP3
Software  Version: MouseWorks 6.2.x
Other  Hardware  

Thank you for your interest in Kensington products.

Kensington Computer Products Group


And the response

   Dear Customer:

Thank you for contacting Kensington Technical Support.

We appreciate your interest in Kensington products. We understand that you are looking for the details and specifications of the Expert Mouse® PS 2 Serial model #64215.

In this regard, we request you to find the manual attached with this E mail.

We would also like to inform you that the DPI of the Trackball is 1000.

Please Read This!

Kensington Technical Support incidents are only processed via our support web site, not via email.  Please do NOT reply to this email, but rather you must click on the link below which will bring you to the Kensington Technical Support web portal where you can initiate questions, modify your active incidents, or perform maintenance on your support account.

Again, please do NOT respond to this incident via email, please click on this link to access your support incident.  Thank you.

Kensington Computer Products Group

Regards,

The so called attached manual is just marketing crap with no specs what so ever.
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 18:35:22
Quote from: ripster;335114
That sounds WAY too high.  I don't think they are giving the right number.

 
To be honest, I'm skeptical too. I don't think such resolution was available in mice or trackball in the mid 90's. My guts memory at 400dpi is probably right.

Looking at the optical sensor Stat chart made by Richard L. Owens also seams to confirm it.

I scanned the MouseWorks files (Kensington software) for DPI and one of it dated 2003 had a note reading about like this – "New release now supports devices running at 800 dpi". So at the very best the Expert Mouse might have been using 800CPI Sensors but I doubt it.

Your DOS app peeping at the cursor vs mouse movement is pretty cool ;-)
(http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/5308/19936146fm4.jpg)
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 19:11:06
I'm heading that way... But what is REAL? I don't have faith in your DPI God.

I like scientific approach better :-)

I just found this USB monitor driver which seams to work pretty well.
http://www.aggsoft.com/usb-port-monitor/download.htm (http://www.aggsoft.com/usb-port-monitor/download.htm)

The unregistered version limits to 2048 packets but it might be sufficient to estimate the DPI.
I'm going to use it against my Razer Lachesis 5000 dpi for Which the DPI can be set via the GUI.

If the results get close to the actual DPI, I will extend the test to my Expert Mouse Pro with the PS2<->USB connector that came with it. The EM Pro is few years younger than the EM shown above but still use the Slit-wheel optical sensors.
Title: CH DT225 vs Kensington Expert Mouse
Post by: BucklingSpring on Thu, 21 April 2011, 23:42:42
I just got pwned like an idiot trying to "unlock" the USB monitor. The crack turned out to be a new and barely detected malware. It messes with the Boot record, punch a rootkit in it and wipe critical files of the OS. Typical backup restore was not even working. Few hours later I'm back to normal and going to call it a day.

I've submitted a sample to VirusTotal. Only 3 AV's were able to detect something.

Sigh... Anyway, I didn't deserve any better. Lesson learned.