Kensington SlimBlade Trackball

[Frenir]

its not as smooth as i remember it when i started using it, it makes kind of a scratchy sound sometimes and i keep cleaning it thinking it will help but it doesn't.

The guy that convinced me to try the Slimblade suggested to use some vaselin on the bearing to make the trackball roll smoother.

I tried it this morning and redid it this afternoon and it is much better.

I guess, I need to do it every time I clean the trackball.

Do not use oil or you will mess up your trackball.

You may use silicon oil but I did not try it.

Hi, I'm the guy who made that youtube video on the previous page. The simplest way to make the trackball's rolling smooth is to pick up the ball and just roll it around in your hands and rub it for a bit. The natural oils from your hand will give it a bit of lubrication. I'm entirely serious and learned this from someone else who did this with his trackballs.

Very good video, informative and enjoyable.

[ZestMyu]

After using the Slimblade for a few more weeks i really can't go back to a mouse though i am forced to with fps gaming to use my mouse because it just seems impossible to play fps with the slimblade. Starcraft 2 works fine with it though.

Matter of practice and getting used to it. I think it took me around 2 months to nearly adapt to it perfectly, granted I was running on the smaller orbit which has much less precision due to the smaller ball. I still have a mouse hooked up but I never touch it any more... Borderlands, Minecraft (ok not much of a FPS), World of Tanks work great with the slimblade.

Scrolling is decent once you get used to it... If you came from the lower end products from kensington (in my case, the orbit with scroll wheel), it reacts in an identical manner; you can just glide your finger around the ball's bezel and it will be nearly perfect for scrolling. It gets to the point where you get used to also resting a finger at the top of the ball to prevent cursor movements and scrolling is effortless.

I agree. After practicing for a while, I found the slimblade fine for gaming.

The only thing stopping me however is the left click behaving strangely in some games.
For example in FF14, I need to double click for it to register as a normal single click.

[kurplop]

I got a new slimblade in the mail today. I have a bit mixed feelings about buttons as well. They're a bit plasticy sounding and stiff when pressed anywhere but at the narrow part on the side.

I also found the button feel to be less than ideal. There is  a sweet spot on the sides where the button feel is better. Other than that the Slimblade is a nice trackball. Because I changed the trackball switches in my ErgoDox/trackball setup, the bad switches are just a distant memory.

[Cheesebaron]

I am waiting to pick up my Trackball at the post office tomorrow, looking forward to try it out. Never used a Trackball type of pointing device before, so this will be a new.

Edit:

So I've got my SlimBlade now and it feels very well built. So now I am getting used to using it as a pointing device instead of my mouse. First thing that is annoying me a bit is, when going from moving the mouse and you want to click something, just touching the ball can move the pointer away from the thing you are trying to click. Also I find it hard to point at small things. Hopefully that will go away with some training.

[Cheesebaron]

How do you cope with precision on Trackballs? Right now I am experimenting with the built-in slow pointer speed shortcut in the Kensington software, because when using the pointer at normal speeds it just overshoots the target I want to click on. So to get the precision the speed of the pointer must go down.

I have been thinking that it might be a good idea with acceleration on this type of input device, so at low speeds it is super accurate and at higher speeds you can get to where you want it to be quickly.

How do you use your Trackball?

[kurplop]

I keep the acceleration set all the way up in Trackballworks. I don't find that I need to use the slow speed function when the pointer speed is set at about 75%.

It may take a little time to get use to it if you are coming from a mouse. A mouse is probably a bit more intuitive and faster  but I find the ergo benefits outweighs a few negatives.

[Cheesebaron]

 Going to try it with Acceleration now. But as I said I find it very hard to control it precisely when the mouse speed is high, so I think I am staring off by having it a like 1/3 pointer speed and full accel to see how that works out.

[Cheesebaron]

Yeah, so it seems like Acceleration is the way to go for me as well, even though I do not like it on a regular mouse, it makes much sense on a Trackball. This way you can be very precise at low speeds and move quickly around the screen when you need to. Works pretty well for me.