Durapoint Mouse

[huha]

I bought this on ebay for somewhat cheap and got it today.
But what is a Durapoint Mouse, anyway? It's Interlink's fully-sealed industrial rugged pointing device, encased in a nice stainless steel case for standalone use. It's completely sealed, so you can immerse it in your bath or whatever you like and it still works.

The unit consists of the heavy case, two large rubber buttons (which take little force to activate and feel surprisingly well) and the rather large rubber nub for mousing. Serial/PS2 connection.

It is an industrial pointing device, and the rugged, fully sealed nature make it usable for a variety of purposes. You can supposedly drive a truck over it without it breaking, but as I don't have a truck, I haven't tested it yet. It's incredibly well built and really, really heavy. Looks great, too.

So far, everything sounds nice and well, but there's one caveat:
The nub just sucks. You'd think they got it right with the great buttons (they're rubber, but they do have some "feel" to them. I wouldn't call it tactile, but you're not mashing on rubber and wonder if it activated, but you'll get a little resistance up front--maybe an air pocket or something like that), but they apparently didn't. The nub works, but it just takes a lot of force to get it moving, thereby totally ruining pretty much any use longer than a few minutes--it's just too exhausting. Not only does it take a lot of force, it's also slow as hell, which is equally as sucky.

So all in all, I can see why there aren't many of them around. The technology is nice, but the product just isn't usable. When you need a pointing device in an environment that just won't let you use trackballs or conventional mice due to, say, loads of oil and small metal filings and corrosive substances, ruining your optical mouse in under a week, then it might be an option, because resistance it where the Durapoint Mouse supposedly excels. As for actual pointing, I wouldn't bother with it. It requires special low-res GUIs to be usable (with the pointer speed cranked all the way up), which is simply not the case on desktop machines.

-huha

[huha]

I did some measurements. The thing weighs about 600 g, which is still pretty heavy. Now to the force!
I needed about 85 cN to get the cursor moving (it was moving very slow by then), maximum cursor speed was reached at about 550 cN. Maximum speed isn't fast either; you'll most likely want to use maximum speed all the time, switching to lower speed for precision work; so basically, you'll have to lean on the nub to make the cursor move, as it needs about half a kilogram to actually reach a decent speed. You could probably use a hammer to operate this, but it's certainly totally unsuitable for any desktop work

-huha

[CreamyNutButter]

I have a Mouse-Trak trackball that can supposedly fall 500 feet from an airplane and work perfectly.