After only one day with it, I feel very comfortable with it. I left my regular mouse there in case I felt I needed to go back to it, I have not reached for it once yet. Looks like this one is a keeper.
Great! Glad the recommendation was a good one.
Actually you can program 6 button actions (here’s how mine is programmed)
- lower left = single click, drag & drop
- upper left = show desktop, great for when I have a lot of windows open and I need to get to my shortcuts
- upper right = double click
- lower right = right click (system functions)
- lower left + lower right = windows task manager (for when that $$@^$@%$ program hangs up)
- upper left + upper right = not used YET
There is a long list of functions that can be assigned to a button
I have used nothing but Kensington Pro track balls for the last 20 years (hate using a mouse)
I even converted my family to using trackballs at home.
Never having to lift a mouse to reposition “Priceless”
Later,
Brain
Here’s how I have mine set up:
- lower left: click
- upper left: command-click
- upper right: right-click
- lower right: double-click
- lower left + lower right: middle-click
- upper left + upper right: option-click
Hey Brain & Steve - thanks for the button set up posts.
Ordered mine last night - [finally] and now just awaiting shipping today sometime.
Ah cool, I didn’t know it could do button combinations too, that’s clever.
I’m happy with my trackball too, I think that for a DAW it’s a great input device.
I’m also firmly of the belief that mice have their place, as a (former) competitive gamer I would NEVER use a trackball to play my shooters. (Just like using a controller btw, you simply don’t get the speed and control you can have with a good mouse.)
So it all depends on what you use it for, but as I said, for a DAW a trackball is great.
Good!
Can’t wait to start leaning mine when it arrives!
I have just ordered one and looking forward to getting to grips with it!
I used to have a small trackball on a laptop many years ago, and at least once a day I had to take it out to clean off the lint.
Now its small size might have made it more prone to such issues, but are there issues with the large ones?
I can appreciate that a larger ball has the momentum to propel the cursor hands-off.
Upside down mouse
One thing that modern mice have these days is that they are optical with no moving parts, so no dust jamming issues (at least if your desk is not a dust bed!).
Just as an experiment, I turned my optical mouse bottom up, and used my finger to swipe over the optical sensor. Besides forward-back working the opposite to the way left-right did, and the instability of resting on its curve, operation was reasonably accurate. Makes me think that they could just as easily get rid of the ball out of trackballs and go optical as well, so that you could have a mouse-shaped (as opposed to large and flat pad) control that you didn’t have to move.
I can happily say that I am glad I bought the Kensington Expert Mouse. I received it yesterday and although I am still getting used to it, it feels great. I can see how it speeds up workflow, for example, The scroll wheel really helps for scrolling vertically within the project window and combined with either the CMC-AI Jogwheel for horizontal navigation (and/or shortcut keys G and H), navigating through a Project with a massive track count is amazingly fast!
So glad I’ve moved from a normal Mouse.
Yes they collect dirt over time, but it takes 10 seconds to clean. On my Kensington Orbit Scroll you can lift the ball out instantly, just swipe your finger over the lights (the sensor is always clean, it’s the red leds that get dirty as they touch the ball) and you’re good to go again.
I see what you mean about using an optical surface instead of a trackball, but the momentum of a physical ball is really nice, you just give it a whirl and it’ll speed across the screen. To achieve the same thing with an optical surface you’d need some acceleration algorithm in software (like windows mouse acceleration, or what they use on trackpads), but I personally prefer a 1-to-1 mapping of my mouse and screen.
Dear friends,
I just baught the wacom intuos black stylus and pen .
I tested on my Cubase 8.5, on a windows10 environment. Everything is working PERFECTLY!
I can select the smallest detail of a wave, I can select the smallest beat on the midi editor.
Everything seems to work fine.
nicolai
I hope you don’t mind me asking, but how do you “click and drag” with one of these?
Seems like it would be difficult.