Post your desktop.

[mr_a500]

A few weeks ago I set my second display (attached to MacBook Retina) in portrait mode and viewing web pages in portrait was awesome. Unfortunately, OSX still can't handle multiple screens properly. There were constant problems when moving windows back and forth between displays - having to manually resize windows, no dock on secondary display, fullscreen on one blanking the other, etc.. Then somehow my monitor shorted out and died. So now I'm back to single display and I won't attempt it again until 4K monitors go down in price. (and OSX finally works properly - which should take some time)

[Muirium]

Maybe I should dig out the old 20" Dell to see just how eyeball cutting Yoesmite will be on non-retina displays. It'll be so horrendous, it's almost worth the experiment.

Oh Apple, why must you still sell poor suckers low res screens while actively working on their imminent downfall? It's like the iPad mini 1st gen all over again. Bleck!

[Medowy]

I tried portrait for a while. Was not for me! Or maybe I should give it another go...

[mr_a500]

Maybe I should dig out the old 20" Dell to see just how eyeball cutting Yoesmite will be on non-retina displays.

When you said "eyeball cutting", I immediately thought of this Salvador Dali movie:



Maybe that should be part of Apple's new ad campaign.

[Medowy]

Maybe I should dig out the old 20" Dell to see just how eyeball cutting Yoesmite will be on non-retina displays.

When you said "eyeball cutting", I immediately thought of this Salvador Dali movie:



Maybe that should be part of Apple's new ad campaign.

That is a creepy one!

[Muirium]

Razor blades to eyeballs have nothing, NOTHING, on the horror of visible pixels! We used to joke about floppy disks and vacuum tubes, but those are the nightmare.

[Kurk]

Urrrh, scary. Keep them razors away from eyeballs. And trackballs for that matter. Anyway, here's my current setup at work: HHKB Pro2 and ITAC Mouse-trak Pro Desktop.

HHKB_and_ITAC.jpg (290.53 KiB) Viewed 9857 times

Sorry for the bad lighting and the dull perspective.

[Grond]

It's funny how your mouse is bigger than your keyboard!

[cookie]

I like the setup!
Blank keycaps, seems you have taste my friend!

I'ts indeed funny that the mouse is bigger than the keyboard but the colors match nicely.
I'd have gone with a kensington expertmouse Or a logitech touchpad, I got used to them and like the gestures.

[ne0phyte]

This was my setup for about 20h yesterday/last night

[cookie]

Looks interesting, I love the 40% board, what have you worked on and which OS do you run on your thinkpad?

[Eszett]

Hi Kurk! I can’t actually image how someone can prefer a trackball over a mouse. Can you tell anything about this trackball? How did you get used to it?

[ne0phyte]

Looks interesting, I love the 40% board, what have you worked on and which OS do you run on your thinkpad?

Our final project (Fachoberschule). We're doing a Tetris on three Atmega8 (CPU, GPU, SPU) conntected via an I2C Bus.
I worked on the SPU (basically a little synthesizer) and am using Arch Linux. As of yesterday this is what I got: http://ne0.cc/media/tetris_atmega.ogg

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I can’t actually image how someone can prefer a trackball over a mouse.

Trackballs have some practical advantages. In particular, they're space-saving. I used to have real trouble at work with my mouse bouncing off my keyboard and my laptop as there just wasn't enough room for a mouse between the two, especially one with very slow tracking. It's much easier now that I've switched from a 105-key to a Poker II, except now I use the mouse more as I find the Poker so bleeding hard to use.

I rarely ever touch a trackball, but I remember using someone's PC a few years ago and he had one, and it was far easier to use than I was expecting. It's something I've not ruled out as a replacement to my pathetic buggy Microsoft mice, so long as I can have my five buttons (L, M, R, X1, X2 just as with the Microsoft IMO 1.1) — I've not yet had enough experience to know how well I'd cope with graphic design with one. For general use, they're fine.

(He also had a keyboard with a split space bar but sadly I have no idea what it was. I don't remember how it felt or sounded, just that the space bar was cut up like people who have their tongue forked.)

[Icarium]

There are young people today who grew up with only laptops and don't even know how to use a mouse. I have a friend who refuses to use anything but a touchpad...

[cookie]

@Neo: Looks very interesting! I like how all that looks, must be fun to work on such project

[DerpyDash_xAD]

Looks interesting, I love the 40% board, what have you worked on and which OS do you run on your thinkpad?

Our final project (Fachoberschule). We're doing a Tetris on three Atmega8 (CPU, GPU, SPU) conntected via an I2C Bus.
I worked on the SPU (basically a little synthesizer) and am using Arch Linux. As of yesterday this is what I got: http://ne0.cc/media/tetris_atmega.ogg

Damn, that sounds gorgeous. I wish I could make stuff souning that good - my musical skills are lacking

Will you be releasing the source code?

[DerpyDash_xAD]

It's something I've not ruled out as a replacement to my pathetic buggy Microsoft mice, so long as I can have my five buttons (L, M, R, X1, X2 just as with the Microsoft IMO 1.1) — I've not yet had enough experience to know how well I'd cope with graphic design with one. For general use, they're fine.

Trackballs are nice, and I think they would be very good for graphic design as you can get very fine control with them. Personally I favour graphics tablets - quite compact, and very natural control. I'm thinking of trying a joystick next. After that I will try Texas Instruments 3D guesture/control system.

There are young people today who grew up with only laptops and don't even know how to use a mouse. I have a friend who refuses to use anything but a touchpad...

I cannot bear touchpads, they never work right. Me and my dad both carry mice with us if there is a chance we'll be using laptops.

[mr_a500]

I can’t actually image how someone can prefer a trackball over a mouse.

I constantly think the exact opposite. I can't imagine why anyone would prefer a mouse. With a mouse, your hand is cramped in the same position and you move it around on a table, bumping into the keyboard, always having to lift and re-centre it so that you don't run out of space. I thought the mouse was a neat idea back in 1985, but by 1989 I had already smashed one against the wall in frustration.

With the trackball you don't need excessive desk space. You don't need to cramp your hand (talking about large ball trackballs, not stupid thumb trackballs which also cramp your hand). You can relax your hand and use any finger to roll the ball. The ball has momentum, so that if you need to move quickly you can just spin the ball hard.

Trackpads can do some things not possible with a trackball, but if I had a choice I'd still go with a trackball. I've found a combination of trackpad + trackball to be just about perfect. I would never go back to using a mouse.

[ne0phyte]

A good mouse has a very small lift off distance. I have a rather heavy and big mouse (Logitech G400) and I usually don't move my arm at all, just my wrist. That sounds very tiring at first, but with a rather high sensitivity it's very little movement actually.
I tried touchpads and trackballs (both for several days until I felt comfortable with it) but I still find mice to be the most precise pointing device.
Well.. I played thousands of hours of FPS games and am super fast and precise with mice so I won't throw that muscle memory away anyway.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I have a rather heavy and big mouse (Logitech G400) and I usually don't move my arm at all, just my wrist. That sounds very tiring at first, but with a rather high sensitivity it's very little movement actually.

That's what I do — move just my wrist. It's fine at home (IntelliMouse Optical 1.1 with its super slow tracking — I have the cursor speed at one notch from maximum) on 1600×1200, but at work, with the same mouse, but 3200×1200, you do need more space, and since I keep a laptop on my desk as well as my desktop PC, I kept running out of room (which I "solved" with a 60% keyboard instead). It's also much harder for me to use a mouse with my non-dominant (left) hand in this manner: I struggle with the short, sharp, precise wrist movements needed to fling the cursor around a huge desktop using my left hand — if I move the cursor too slowly, I don't get enough cursor acceleration and I run out of room. Even with a Poker II the mouse kept colliding with the keyboard and phone. In part that's because Microsoft suck at making mice. (Since the nerve twitching in my right hand is nearly gone, I got bored of using my left hand and went back to having the mouse on the right again, before I got too frustrated ;-)

(My mouse also gets confused: for some reason it gets my screen corners mixed up and puts the cursor into the wrong one a lot — trackballs also rule out problems like incompatible tracking surfaces, such as the areas on my desk at work where the cursor goes crazy.)

[Grond]

I had never used a trackball until last year a bought a second hand Kensington Slimblade for the sake of trying. I immediatly liked it better than any mouse I've ever used. I find it more precise, I can use it equally well with both hands, and I never get any pain after prolonged used. Someday I hope I'll update to a CST or other higher end model, but for now it's just fine, and overall I don't believe I'll ever go back to mice. I'm not a gamer though, so my judgment is based on standard everyday used.

[ne0phyte]

[...] I don't get enough cursor acceleration and I run out of room.

I don't use mouse acceleration. Giving me/asking me to use a computer with mouse acceleration is one of the worst things you could do to me. Mouse acceleration makes it impossible for me to move to a specific position fast and precisely in one swipe.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Strangely enough, that actually seems possible — I can get all the way across 1600 pixels while moving the cursor slowly with my wrist.

In fact, having just paid closer attention, I move the mouse more with my fingers and thumbs than my wrist (perhaps 70/30 or 60/40 split, fingers vs wrist motion).

Cursor acceleration is great for normal work, but it makes things like annotating an image with mousewritten text much harder as your letters tend to distort through changes in acceleration.

[cookie]

But once you get used to zero acceleration, there is no way back

[DerpyDash_xAD]

I can't imagine why anyone would prefer a mouse. With a mouse, your hand is cramped in the same position and you move it around on a table, bumping into the keyboard, always having to lift and re-centre it so that you don't run out of space.

That is part of the reason I favor ultra-high DPI mice. My current mouse - CM Storm Reaper - is 8200 DPI. I can cover 1920px in less than 2cm - moving my mouse slowly.

The ball has momentum, so that if you need to move quickly you can just spin the ball hard.

That is why trackballs greatly appeal to me, but I cannot see myself using the different button positions.

[cookie]

That is part of the reason I favor ultra-high DPI mice. My current mouse - CM Storm Reaper - is 8200 DPI. I can cover 1920px in less than 2cm - moving my mouse slowly.

Wow, this would annoy the hell out of me!

[002]

Same here. I have two colleagues who use their mouse with ultra-high sensitivity and I am surprised they get anything done. I'm with ne0phyte on mouse acceleration too. It's one of the first things I disable on a fresh install. I remember when it became standard on...?Vista? and a setup of Counter-Strike for me (and I'm sure others) involved a .reg key to remove all mouse acceleration crap in Windows.

[Kurk]

At work, I use the ITAC Professional trackball but at home I still use a mouse (Logitech G9). There's two reasons for the home rodent:
1) Gaming. Some game genres (e.g. FPS) and trackballs don't mix, at least not in my experience.
2) Prices of decent trackballs. Decent means with proper ball bearings. AFAIK, there is no consumer grade trackball that uses ball bearings. It's all plastic scraping against plastic. That is really unfortunate because the difference between a smoothly rolling ball and a scratchy one is like night and day.
The only trackballs with ball bearings that come to my mind are the ITAC Pro, ITAC Evolution and the CH DT225.

@Eszett: here's a short review:
http://deskthority.net/other-devices-f3 ... t7391.html

[mr_a500]

1) Gaming. Some game genres (e.g. FPS) and trackballs don't mix, at least not in my experience.

I've seen this kind of comment many times and it always surprises me. I'm not a "hardcore gamer", but I've played many FPS games with both trackball and mouse and I've found the trackball to be better - faster positioning and aim. I've completed Halo, Half-life, Half-life 2, etc. using a trackball. (as a side note, trackpad is absolutely useless for most gaming)

Incidentally, one of the very first video games I ever played had a trackball - Centipede, back in 1980.