[Ardon]

It's never been clear to me why people want a mouse clitoris on a computer with a real trackpad.

I've seen plenty of windows laptops with awful trackpads where I get it, but aren't they just a huge step back compared to a macbook trackpad?

[NeedMoreTea]

My ideal laptop would be a 2015 Macbook Pro with Thinkpad keyboard (the older one before Lenovo moved all the keys around) and trackpoint. Preferably without the trackpad at all like was an option on older Thinkpads. On my last Thinkpad you could customise the trackpad to activate differently and do entirely different things to the trackpoint. Useful for a select few apps. I ultimately disabled the trackpad as I didn't use those few often enough.

Middle click scroll whilst still typing, as your fingers stay on the home keys. Precision and acceleration that's leagues ahead of every trackpad, including Apple, and faster than moving hand to a mouse. OK, I know quite a few seem to struggle with a trackpoint when first using by using actions that worked on their trackpad and other oddities. It's so long ago I forget my first encounters and learning curve.

I carry a small mouse around with the Macbook. When I have used Thinkpads I never carried a mouse and often didn't use the mouse at my desk either.

[scottlocklin]

Mine would be a new X220 form factor thinkpad with modern battery tech and... any linux OS. It's OK though; I've got enough X220s and batteries to last me the rest of my career.

[tokai]

And a better screen. The X220 is really let down by that horrible panel.

[scottlocklin]

The TFT isn't totally horrible, but there aren't enough of them.

[philwelch]

I've never developed the muscle memory to be effective with the trackpoint, but it does have the distinct advantage of being usable without taking your hands off the keyboard.

[binomialxenon]

I can use it without moving my hands away from home-row position, I can drag-n-drop much more easily than a trackpad, middle-clicking and right-clicking are both more consistent, and I can scroll indefinitely in any direction without picking up my hands.

This is probably just me, but when using my laptop on my lap, if I were using the trackpad i would have to bring my hands down closer to my body which is less comfortable, or move my laptop further away from me.

[akarambir]

Can you provide some info into how you typically use trackpoint. Which fingers do you use and how do you control the acceleration when going few pixels away or whole screen corner to corner. What about the clicks.

I have a thinkpad and am always curious on how to effectively use it. Even a video of someone using it might help.

[NeedMoreTea]

This will be hard to describe. I'll try.

Treat it as a tiny proportional joystick, which it is. I use index finger of dominant hand. Press hard and it'll fly the cursor across the screen. Press gently and it'll give excellent precision. If you keep overshooting, you haven't adjusted to gently enough. It is less movement and more thought for pixel perfect precision as you can barely feel any feedback but still get movement.

I always have to turn up acceleration, but rarely sensitivity, in Trackpoint settings a notch or two for my own preference. For me, if I turn sensitivity down, it ruins it. YMMV.

I will left, right and middle click with thumbs as they're just below space and land there naturally.

Thumb on middle and drag to scroll at pressure sensitive speed for as long as you press. No need to "reset" when you reach the end of trackpad or finger on scrollwheel. Two thumbs and index finger means select and paste are almost as fast as vi-only approaches, as it's placed so you're essentially still typing. :)

[kannanvijayan]

I realize the original poster responded, but I am currently in the process of going through this transition and my experience may be of use to you.

The thinkpad was the latest machine I got, after a string of macbooks and one XPS-15. I made a concerted effort to switch simply because I'm spoiled on OSX trackpads, and the thinkpad trackpad widget just isn't up to par (especially on ThinkPad + Linux). I asked a few colleagues how they got around the trackpad issue and a couple mentioned they just use the nipple cursor.

It's been a few months now. Changing over was really annoying at first. As the other poster mentioned - the key is learning muscle memory for _sensitivity_ to control the speed of the cursor. A light firm touch with a small pressure in the correct direction is all that's necessary for moderate speed.

I use my left index finger to control the cursor, and my left (spacebar) thumb to at the same time to click/drag/etc (as the mouse buttons are right below the spacebar).

Middle-click + drag-down for scrolling is really convenient.

I find myself having just crossed that midway point where the new system is becoming dominant. The trackpads are starting to feel somewhat unwieldy and cumbersome to me now - even the macbook ones when I use my wife's or friends'. It feels like they require too much hand movement, and are far more "gesticulatory" than gentle pushes and pulls on the nipple cursor.

I think I'm faster with the cursor now than with even high-quality trackpads.

If you do end up trying it out, be prepared to tweak settings a bit to get the right ones for you (and as the other replier mentioned - don't skimp on sensitivity), and be prepared to spend a couple weeks feeling like your hands are tied when you want to move the cursor around.

It gets better after that.

[NeedMoreTea]

Interesting to read as I first used one so long ago most of the learning curve is lost to the mist of time.

> It feels like they require too much hand movement, and are far more "gesticulatory" than gentle pushes

Well put. This encapsulates it well.

> I think I'm faster with the cursor now

When I'd got the hang of never overshooting and changing pressure to vary acceleration as I move around, trackpads, even Apple's, just start to feel cumbersome. Quite apart from the need to move hand away from the keyboard so you can't press keys at the same time. It's the thing I miss most on my Mac.

Oh, and just to address the parent's comment that a video might help. Probably not, as there's not much movement to see. Press an index finger on a desk or table and roll your finger around the pad - that's the extremes of movement you should expect with a trackpoint, assuming your finger didn't move on the table at all. :)

[binomialxenon]

I'm left handed, I use my left index finger to manipulate the trackpoint, and my left thumb for any of the three mouse buttons. Clicking the middle button is a middle click, and holding the middle button makes the trackpoint movements act as scrolling.

My laptop is a T450s, running Debian and KDE Plasma. Acceleration is set to medium, and "Adaptive". The key is tuning your sensitivity/accelaration so you can make very fine/slow movements, but also move the cursor all the way across the screen with stronger/faster ones.

[wink]

See, it's never been clear to me how anyone would willingly work with a touchpad. My first laptop had one and I used with a mouse whenever I could, even in uni lecture halls where there wasn't really much space.

Only when I got my first thinkpad I could finally work without a mouse and haven't looked back since.

And yes, the mac ones are a bit better than the others, but I still don't like them. At all.

[Lio]

I'd have give a trackpoint on the HP Elitebook I was given to work with by one customer if only there was a way to scroll with it.

Not sure if that's possible on a Thinkpad but there was no obvious way on the HP running Ubuntu to do the equivalent of two finger touchpad scrolling.

[umichguy]

I dunno. Most of the windows laptops I've used all had mediocre touchpads, so if I was going to do some serious amount of work on them, always used the mouse. But for my MBPs, the thought never even occurs to me, the touchpad does the job quite well.

[camgunz]

I'm a big thinkpad fan, and I prefer the trackpoint to trackpads. You never have to move your hands out of position, and the benefit of that is hard to communicate to someone who is used to trackpads. You can also have better form factors, better keyboards, etc, because you don't need to leave a big chunk of space free for the trackpad.

FWIW I'm ok with trackpads too; I'm an engineer and all my jobs have given me an MBP for work. But like, I'm never pinching and zooming, keyboard shortcuts work just fine for paging and back/forward. Love I know gestures have been successful because keyboard shortcuts aren't intuitive, but to someone like me who uses them, gestures just seem like gimmicks for which we sacrifice smaller laptops and bigger keyboards.

Also FWIW I dislike naming things after genitals. I find it crude and vaguely misogynistic in this case, and wish people would stop.

[virmundi]

Put the mouse pad at the top of the keyboard, not under your hands. For most people you only need a 1"x2" pad. Maybe have two for lefties. It makes more ergonomic sense. If you need more than that, you're probably better off with an external mouse.

[eptcyka]

It's more precise when operated without moving hands away from the keyboard. I can almost play dota or FPS games to the same degree I can with a mouse with the clitmouse, such things can't really be said about the trackpad. There are also 3 distinct buttons which I find handy - I don't recall exactly how trackpads solved the right mouse click or middle click issues - so whilst I miss out on the gestures, I find I can do about the same things with keyboard shortcuts or extra buttons on the mouse (scrolling with the middle click and moving the cursor).

However, extended use does induce tension in my wrist - hence I prefer not to play games on a laptop. The first thing I do when I get a new laptop with a trackpoint and a trackpad is disable the trackpad. If the glorious fruit company offered laptops with trackpoints, I'd do the same. I don't believe that a trackpoint is better than a trackpad in every conceivable way, but it does fit my way of using my devices far better than trackpads do. However, I also don't believe that there will ever be a trackpoint on a glorious fruit device - they don't allow for multiple ways of doing the same thing, and I'm very aware that most people do prefer trackpads to trackpoints. I just hope that my niche will be served by someone until I no longer want to use laptops.