A fantastic pointing device

You could call me a computer “nut”. Enter my desktop, and you will see, from a distance, a desk, computer, monitor, keyboard and mouse. Get a little closer, and, on the monitor, you’ll see I’m running Linux. After that initial (small shock), try typing on the keyboard. Instant death, as you’ll realize that the home row is ‘aoeu id htns’, the Dvorak keyboard. Then, try and move the mouse and you’ll realize, well, the mouse doesn’t move! Ahhhhh!!! Head Explosion!!!

Madness aside, you can tell, I’m pretty specific about efficiency in my computer environment. But, the madness all came from a reason. I’ll spare you the reasons of the keyboard and the operating system, and focus on the primary reason of the review, the trackball.

The story starts like this. Mostly, I’ve always used the computer for many hours on end, but for fun. Since about age three, I’ve used a mouse, and thought nothing of it. But recently, as my usage has increased, and my all-nighters started ranging later and later (I now hate Romeo and Juliet, and English Honors in general), my hand started paining at using a mouse, to the point where, by the time I had to do the final save and print, my hand pained so much, that I would use my (Windows) Mouse Emulator to do anything with the mouse with my wrist clutching in pain.

Fastforward a couple months later to my birthday. I get some money, and wanna spend it on something non-gameish. So, I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be some computer hardware thing. That’s when I get intrigued by the prospect that my computer teacher has a ‘trackball’, a concept I’ve heard about, but never really investigated. I did a lot of research into trackballs, their origins, their strengths and weaknesses, and finally their designs. I finally decided to get a trackball that somewhat resembled a mouse, so I wouldn’t have to relearn mousing if I ever used a mouse elsewhere (which I do at school). So, I decided on the Logitech Trackman Wheel. I specifically picked corded rather than cordless because it’s just a money sink to buy 2 AAs whenever you run out of receiver time.

Now, on to the meat of the review, the review of the physical device. From the moment I unpacked the Trackman, I fell in love with it. My only aesthetic complaint about it is the black spots on the ball. Other tan that, the blackish exterior nicely complements the dark red ball. The wheel swivels nice and smooth, and is incredibly responsive. To me, unlike to most people, the trackball seemed intuitive to me. Within minutes, I was using the trackball for buttons and such, but, still couldn’t get the hang of text highlighting (which I’m still having a little trouble with it) because of my lack of experience. The trackball is slightly small for my hand, much only where my pinky is slightly cramped, but comfortable regardless. This may be a detractor for those with larger hands.

Software wise, I’m not too picky. All the basic mouse features work out of the box on this unit, and that makes me happy, as I have no wish to use the included software on the disk to do anything special with the buttons on my Windows partition. On my Linux partition, there’s no option for that, and being totally USB fine, I’m happy. I’m also very happy with the included PS/2 adapter, so I can use it on my old Pentium 100.

Overall, I’m very happy with my Trackman. It’s a nice, responsive device, and it works great with little configuring. It’s pretty intuitive, and still retains mouse qualities, without any fancy buttons. I give it a great rating.