[msquared]

Combining "Buy a portable computer instead" and "The only peripheral you absolutely need is a hard disk or network drive to put backups on" doesn't make sense. I don't know about you, but my productivity tanks the second I don't have a mouse.

[technomancy]

That's weird--I'm way more productive when I'm not using a mouse.

[jff]

You just think you're more productive because you get to slam "jjjjjjjjjjjjlllllllllll" to position your cursor.

Use the mouse for what it's good at: pointing at things and selecting text. Use the keyboard for what it's good at: entering text, such as regular expressions to transform the code you just highlighted.

[technomancy]

> you get to slam "jjjjjjjjjjjjlllllllllll" to position your cursor.

Incremental search, dude.

[runjake]

It probably largely depends on your platform. In Alex's case, he uses a Mac laptop, which has a trackpad. Apple has done a bang-up job of making the trackpad useful and dare I say "expressive" in Mac OS X.

On the Mac, the latest gens of their trackpads have obsoleted mice for me.