A place to discuss the weird and wonderful world of that rodent alternative, the TRACKBALL!
Currently using a logitech marble, the one without scroll, and love the ergonomics but hate the bearings
Candidates: Ltrac: great scrollwheel and bearings. Not sure about ergonomics. Seems high, inducing tilted up wrist, which is a big nono. 4.5 cm high
Gameball: no mech bearings, good scroll, good ergonomics from the looks of it.
Ploppy: terrible scroll, great bearings
Slimblade, expert: soso bearings, soso scroll mechanism
What would you pick?
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You are underrating the Slimblade.
'Bearings' and scrolling are well above so-so. Although the latter is a deal breaker for many, I'll take that over click-to-scroll any day (but you could use it too).
It's also as low and flat as it gets before you start looking into embedded units.
I tried the slimblade when they first came out, seem to remember having to use foreign language software to get it to work correctly.
At the time it would not register a multi m2+m1 click. Have they fixed that?
The Kensington software works just fine with mine. And yeah, you can chord clicks. Bottom buttons, right buttons, left buttons, and top buttons can all be set up to do a task.
I think what I am asking is, can you disable chord clicks. I do not want the 3rd function when I hold m2 and click m1. I only want m2 and m1 to register. There wasn't an option for that when I was using it with software. I had the same problem while using the software for the marble mouse, m2+m1=m3 I don't want that. W/o software it works fine.
I know you can set the chord to "nothing" in the software.
I thought I'd hate the slimblade, but found one for $3 at a thrift store, minus the ball. Well, I have 3-4 of the Kensington Balls from using the things for decades, and I actually like it a LOT more than I thought I would. It's on my main PC's desk right now and my Expertmouse (Heh, almost called it a Turbomouse) is on my work laptop's station.
I've gotten in the habit of running my finger around the groove, and it seems to do a good enough job of scrolling. I thought I'd have to actually constantly twist it with 2 fingers, but since that isn't the case, I'm pretty satisfied with it.
I'll throw in the Adesso T50. It's cheap and you may prefer it to the Slimblade since you seem to dislike the ball twist scroll.
On a different note, at first I was also put off by the Ploopy Adept's lack of a scrolling mechanism but have since configured it so the thumb button is still left click but once I start dragging with that button held down, it initiates drag scroll. Using the strong thumb for button scroll is not an ergonomic issue for me and I'm very happy with this setup. Doing the same with the ring finger (in the default configuration) would not have been a long-term option for me.
To compensate for the lost left button drag functionality, I have a drag lock toggle elsewhere for when I need to actually drag icons / files around. I now find this always-lock-and-unlock approach to dragging much more comfortable. There is a reason old-school trackballs had dedicated buttons for draglock after all.
What Ploopy you're referring to?
Ploppy classic has a simple scrollwheel that reviewers seem to agree is not very good.
Adept scrolls by holding a button. This is what I do with my marble, and ergonomic wisdom says this is not a good idea. It's also a bit inconvenient, you have to think whether to enter 'scroll mode' and that's one more decision to make. I don't want my peripherals to induce any thinking, or any disruption in my train of thought, the same way I want to type with high accuracy so that I don't have to stop my thoughts to fix a typo
The thumb one is, well, thumb driven, and I prefer finger trackballs.
The 'scroll by button press' also feels the wrong paradigm when you have to zoom in by doing ctrl scroll. It feels like a lot of effort to change into scrollmode just to do two ticks of scroll. So I prefer a dedicated scroll system. The best I've seen are logitech vertical mouse (typical scrollwheel with inertia) and kensington scrollring. Thumb trackballs usually have the 'crappy scrollwheel from the 90's' type of scrolling, which I find terrible, only useful for zooming in and out. Browsing requires a lot of scrolling so this is important to get right. It might be the hardest requirement to get right
Well, everyone have their own "ergonomic wisdom": for me that method is fine. In any case, Ploopy seems to be the only maker that still use ball bearings today (in finger-operated models, at least). Another option available is, some older models (e.g. from Kensington), but their DPI is low for modern systems.
Well, L-trac has also ball bearings, right?
Not at all. It uses primitive rollers in plastic bushings, just like $10 Chinese trackballs 20 - 30 years ago.
L-Trac has scrollwheel positioned far away, so I have to use a wrist rest (and to compensate for the slope too). Other than that, lack of buttons and if you can accept those tradeoffs, go with it.
Yes, lack of buttons is a problem, this is where any other trackball wins. Particularly the Ploppies, which are programmable
I have an L-TRAC with roller bearings installed and it feels great to move around but no scroll disqualifies it from daily use. Same issue with the ITAC.
I have an MTE but my wrist hurts after using it for a while so I avoid this design (Ploopy Classic, Gravi, etc). Huge also has this issue for me.
I use a modified DT225 to daily around at home. I also have an older Expert V5 (64217) but I don't want to mod the USB version as it's rarer. The older Expert is about the same dpi as the Marble Mouse's 320dpi.
Is your wrist bent while using MTE? I had the same issue while using Protoarc EM03. Solution was to get a gel pad which I rest my hand on. I position it so that there is a small space between the trackball and gel pad and my wrist is kinda in the air. This straightens the wrist and the strain is gone. I had the same issue with GameBall.
To test this theory without having to get a gel pad first: try holding your hand in the air and operating MTE that way to see if it’s sans pain.
I have a gel pad I can try, maybe it'll work 😄. If it were to work I may consider a Ploopy Classic with roller bearings but I still have a couple of projects in queue before building a Ploopy.
Given those options... Probably GameBall. Not even my favorite, but it's the closest to your stated needs.
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Good job! :-)