At Thu, 07 May 2009 10:53:23 +0100 (BST), (Ted Harding) wrote:
On 07-May-09 08:59:26, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Thu, 2009-05-07 at 08:39 +0100, Chris G wrote:
[...] Do any of the netbooks have a trackball rather than a pad? I really don't know why trackballs aren't more popular, I use one on my desktop and we now have a wireless keyboard with a trackball and it's magic, no separate mouse to lose/drop and the trackball is much nicer than a pad.
A few of us have been moaning about this on the list...well not trackballs specifically but why they insist on using trackpads rather than trackpointers/nipples when there is so little space on the palmrest. The only netbook type device I have seen that had a trackball was some of the early Toshiba Librettos. Everything other than the trackpad seems to have lost favour with the manufacturers now. Hell even some thinkpads come without a nipple !
I have come to hate track/touchpads! At best they're harder to control than a mouse or trackball. At worst they have become too clever and hypersensitive (which I suppose adds up to neurotic).
Some of them implement some quite cool gestures like pinching which is often mapped to zoom functions. And two finger dragging mapped to scrolling. Though I find too much trackpadding makes the end of my finger hurt :,(
Many's the time the ball of my thumb has lightly brushed the touchpad, sent the mouse leaping off to some far corner (with interesting implications if one is typing), and even triggered some action.
[snip]
Some laptops have a little button on the touchpad which turns it off. Then you have pure mouse, which is a much better situation.
If Chris G is debating which one to get, the Acer Aspire One allows you to switch off the touchpad with Fn F7. In fact, the AAO trackpad isn't really the best. It's very small and its left and right buttons are on the edge. (Though using only Emacs, Conkeror, and Fluxbox I pretty much manage to avoid needing a mouse at all.)
In the AAO's defense, however, the reason why the trackpad is so small is because they chose to provide a decent-sized keyboard. The AAO keyboard, IMO, is one of its strong points.