[jodrellblank]

> "Have you considered using a Trackpoint instead of a mouse?"

A mouse is a proxy for the pointer, you move the mouse and that moves the pointer a scaled amount, precisely, distance-for-distance predictable movement. A trackpoint is a joystick, you lean it in a direction and the pointer goes in that direction and you have to work with the timing and guess when to let go for the pointer to stop in the place you want. It's like controlling a pointer by poking it with a bouncy spring, there could hardly be a worse mismatch.

The opposite version of the mismatch is trying to control a driving game with a mouse, where the car only steers left as long as the mouse is actively moving left, so you have to continually swipe the mouse and pick it up and reswipe over and over to go round a corner.

Joysticks are not a good fit to control a mouse pointer.

[imiric]

> A trackpoint is a joystick, you lean it in a direction and the pointer goes in that direction and you have to work with the timing and guess when to let go for the pointer to stop in the place you want.

Have you ever used a Trackpoint? It's more than a joystick. It's pressure sensitive, which means that you can quickly cross large distances, or be precise across smaller ones, by adjusting the exerted pressure. There's no guessing where the pointer will stop, since there's no deceleration, and you're almost[1] always in full control.

I agree that it's less precise than a mouse, but not by much once you're used to it. I'd trade the comfort of always keeping my hands on the keyboard for a slight decrease in precision any day. And this is even less of a problem if you optimize your workflow to use keyboard-driven UIs as much as possible.

[1]: The only issue I have with it is that it ocasionally gets "stuck" in one direction, which fixes itself after a second of letting go of it. It's possibly related to dirt or dust, because of its high sensitivity, but I haven't found that cleaning helps much. Though this might be only an issue on ThinkPad laptops, which Lenovo hasn't cared to fix for many years now.

[scraptor]

Re [1], if the pressure is constant for about a second the software assumes that you aren't touching it and what remains is error in the hardware. It then compensates for the error by introducing a constant offset which exactly counteracts your motion. The only way to fix it is to let go until the software recalibrates to the actual error with zero pressure. Since learning this I've mostly avoided it without consciously changing my behaviour.

[jodrellblank]

Joysticks are pressure sensitive, the speed of e.g. game aircraft roll is proportional to how far you lean the joystick. Yes I have used a trackpoint, that's why I dislike it so much.

You know when moving a mouse to resize a column in some data view, only the developers made it so the hit target is a single pixel and it's excruciating to try and hit it? A trackpoint is like that all the time, for every use case.

[imiric]

To each their own, of course. :)