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#21
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Mousekeys alternatives?
Lostgallifreyan wrote in
: My battered optical mouse finally quit (is why I write so much right now, it limits most of the other stuff I'm meant to be doing). Got replacents now. I think there were a couple of posts where Thanatoid mentioned mice but I can't find them to reply to. Basically, if anyone hasn't tried opticals, there's a good chance to try, eBay seller Blarney-Jon in Ireland. These mice are made there, too, and they're straight from a factory as OEM supplies it looks like, so you'll need a USB to PS2 adapter if you aren't using it on USB.. They're extremely good value, and take a beating over more than a year before they give up. They work really well with the Logitech 'Mouseware' driver v8.62. Hyperjump enabled. That's the best combination I found for mouse control in W98, and I tried a few. I know there are really cheap mice, but more than ten times the quality at double the price has to be the best compromise I know. Opticals never need maintenance, until a button switch fails or something else breaks. When I had a ball mouse I could only imagine tracking like these have, too. |
#22
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Mousekeys alternatives?
In message ,
Lostgallifreyan writes: [] as OEM supplies it looks like, so you'll need a USB to PS2 adapter if you aren't using it on USB.. They're extremely good value, and take a beating [] I _think_ I am correct in saying that it has to be a mouse (or keyboard) designed to work with both interfaces: just having a USB to PS/2 adapter _doesn't_ guarantee operation. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Solution: a more subtle problem |
#23
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Mousekeys alternatives?
Lostgallifreyan wrote in
: The button replacement switches can be gotten, among other places, from www.mouser.com [sic] and they cost about 50 cents each. They are made by Omron in Japan, and are probably superior to whatever your mouse had when you bought it. Anyone with basic soldering skills can change them. Of course, you should open your mouse and make sure you are getting the exact correct switch, but I don't think they gave changed. What's changed is the stupid scroll wheel and the optical/laser "improvement". |
#24
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Mousekeys alternatives?
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
: In message , Lostgallifreyan writes: [] as OEM supplies it looks like, so you'll need a USB to PS2 adapter if you aren't using it on USB.. They're extremely good value, and take a beating [] I _think_ I am correct in saying that it has to be a mouse (or keyboard) designed to work with both interfaces: just having a USB to PS/2 adapter _doesn't_ guarantee operation. True but I'm fairly sure these are designed for both. The seller spoke of selling some for laptop machines without the adapters, so they surely work without, somehow. Also, they come with adapters, I forgot that because I already have spares so I didn't think about that point when I posted before. (And I'd only just got them and posted quickly). |
#25
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Mousekeys alternatives?
thanatoid wrote in
: Of course, you should open your mouse and make sure you are getting the exact correct switch, but I don't think they gave changed. What's changed is the stupid scroll wheel and the optical/laser "improvement". Already do. Five at a time from RS Components. By the time my mice die they've usually had a switch or two replaced, but once there are tiny cracks in the PCB or chips in the plastic that combine to make poor or erratic contact even when a switch or PCB trace was recently fixed, it looks more fun to replace all. I get real mileage out of these.. The optical bit is an improvement, really it is. It's a bright LED, not a laser, very narrow bandwidth light but not coherent (no speckle). I don't know how it tracks, but likely a small 4-quadrant silicon photocell with an acrylic waveguide that uses internal reflection to send and collect the light. I can use it on the arm of a chair, where the only previous device that works was a £40 trackball! Not having to hold it in certain ways to get clean tracking really reduces the stress. I used to grip mice so hard in an effort to keep them tracking well, that it hurt to use them, but the optical ones totally ease that problem. I never have to get tetchy about a failure to precisely point to something even on surfaces so crude that no ball mouse could work at all, let alone have to clean the innards every few hours. And at the current price this isn't a luxury item... I felt like I had my money's worth when they used to cost ten times what they cost now. |
#26
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Mousekeys alternatives?
thanatoid wrote in
: the stupid scroll wheel Once you get used to hovering over some general area in Media Player Classic, or 1by1, and using that as a volume control, or clicking in a spin control and being able to quickly home in on a new numeric value be it two or twenty integers distant, you may repent of that view. A simple knob or slider is basic to ALL electronics with proportional controls, EXCEPT for a computer! Given that the scroll wheel lets us point to some control, based on the assumption that we are only likely to tweak one at a time, the scroll wheel is a very good idea. It took me far less time to get into it that to wonder how I'd done without it before, and I didn't waste much time on that either. Using it as a third button for double clicks helps too. No misfires that way. All round stress reduction... |
#27
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Mousekeys alternatives?
Lostgallifreyan wrote in
: snip The optical bit is an improvement, really it is. It's a bright LED, not a laser, very narrow bandwidth light but not coherent (no speckle). I don't know how it tracks, but At one time I bought a Genius mouse (I know, but there was nothing else in the corner store), and the thing flashing its red LED's whenever my hand approached it drove me insane. Since the buttons were also cheap Chinese crap, I just put it away. For the price, it wasn't even worth going back to the store to argue about having to press buttons more than once to get a result. Yeah, I didn't think it was a laser, but you never know. That's what they /call/ them. The magic word. I remember when a laser pointer cost $300. The world sure has gone to hell since then. AFA scroll wheels, on one hand I agree, and there is nothing I miss more than potentiometers and similar rotating devices to control electronics. Having to press several tiny buttons in the exactly correct order, half the time going where you do NOT want to, and having to start all over, is a nightmare, no more, no less. One might argue the scroll wheel is a step in the right direction, but only a small device with six or so scroll wheels would be /really/ useful - but also confusing. Speaking of six scroll wheels, a fully ergonomic handpad, one for each hand, whether with buttons or scroll wheels or trackballs or a combination thereof, possibly with all those as plugin modules in case you actually WANT ten scroll wheels for some application, and that does NOT cost $800 /might/ be a solution. The fact we still have to drag around an idiotic piece of plastic and click when its tiny asymmetrical arrow is pointed at something is beyond retarded, whether there is a ball or an LED or a laser inside. Nor do I think anything will change soon - I still laugh about "natural keyboards" giving people more wrist injuries than the regular ones. And I do NOT think swishing your finger across the screen of your cellphone or iPad, neither of which I own nor intend to ever get, is the answer either. And I can just imagine trying to do image editing with voice commands. I have an old graphic tablet with a stylus and that actually works pretty well as an all-purpose mouse but the "left click" button is not well-placed ergonomically. And the spring inside is wonky and not replaceable. I used to like trackballs, have two, one wireless, and still use them sometimes, when I need a change. But as much as I hate to say it, NO mouse design has ever improved on the MS serial mouse ver 2.0A. (The shape of ver 1 might have been identical, I don't believe I ever saw one.) That's what I still use. Fortunately, my "newest" computer (7 yrs old) has 2 serial ports. I have no idea how well a serial- USB adapter would work. I hate all this stuff, I really do. I miss taking walks in the mountains and drinking from tiny streams of pure ice-cold water. I miss food that was actually food. I remember when airline cutlery was stainless steel. I miss being able to take an airplane without feeling like a pig in a cage surrounded by guys with guns under their jackets. And as much as I hate people, I also miss people actually talking to each other. Now, if anyone DOES talk to anyone else, AOT "texting" or using a cellphone (more and more people I know have NO land lines at all), it is usually ABOUT their new cellphone or iPad. It's sickening. And I hate the internet more and more every day. It's all so ridiculous. |
#28
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Mousekeys alternatives?
thanatoid wrote in
: At one time I bought a Genius mouse (I know, but there was nothing else in the corner store), and the thing flashing its red LED's whenever my hand approached it drove me insane. Since the buttons were also cheap Chinese crap, I just put it away. For the price, it wasn't even worth going back to the store to argue about having to press buttons more than once to get a result. These are better, trust me, I couldn't stand that either. If these behaved like that I'd have stamped on them. The light is all but invisible, it's not for show on the top (I got rid of one like that too, it wasn't even a light for tracking. These are, the light is purely functional, on a dark surface you very rarely get to see it let alone notice it in use. The seller deliberately avoids the nastier Chinese mice. Not hard, he lives in Ireland, same place that made them. The button action is clean, very stable, and the wires aren't the kind that rip apart as easily as soft woll either. One might argue the scroll wheel is a step in the right direction, but only a small device with six or so scroll wheels would be /really/ useful - but also confusing. Speaking of six scroll wheels, a fully ergonomic handpad, one for each hand, whether with buttons or scroll wheels or trackballs or a combination thereof, possibly with all those as plugin modules in case you actually WANT ten scroll wheels for some application, and that does NOT cost $800 /might/ be a solution. I've considered such a device too, but as a musical instrument control. I thought of it based on a cross between sliders, and trumpet valves. But for general computer use I wouldn't want it, as you say, confusing. The GUI's business is to group the controls on a virtual surface. (Stuff like wxLua lets us build our own interfaces too, even if we don't know C and all the elaborate complier systems out there). But once I have that set of controls, I know I'll only tweak one, even if it's one after the other, fast. The SpinControl is a very neat tool, part textbox, part up/down buttons, and nothing beats clicking in one of those, then scrolling to get the value. Those controls (ideally, and usually in practise) can be coded to take text representations of the internal value too, so this method is as close as I ever saw to thinking about the selection and it magically happening. Almost all other methods including direct numeric entry are clumsy in comparison. If the mouse didn't track so well, this too would be annoying as a data entry method, but as it is, it works very well, especially on large control surfaces like those in CakeWalk, and I used wxLua to code a DX7 (synthesizer) editor entirely on the strenght of this ability. It's faster and easier than on the original DX7 because my finger is always within an inch of what amounts to the data entry slider. The fact we still have to drag around an idiotic piece of plastic and click when its tiny asymmetrical arrow is pointed at something is beyond retarded, whether there is a ball or an LED or a laser inside. Nor do I think anything will change soon - I still laugh about "natural keyboards" giving people more wrist injuries than the regular ones. I guess the problem is how fast we can adapt to it as an extebsion of the body. 'Ergonomics' sucks for the same reason that 'smart' psychoacoustics sucks. Only works well for those who can adapt specifically to it. It's easier for US to adapt to a situation than for us to to imagine we can force a situation to adapt to US. If the the reverse were true we'd all be doctors, surgeons even. And I do NOT think swishing your finger across the screen of your cellphone or iPad, neither of which I own nor intend to ever get, is the answer either. And I can just imagine trying to do image editing with voice commands. I found touchscreens weird. But so long as they have precision they can help. A finger is rarely any good. A stylus is fiddly, but it works. Large touchscreens like ELO's type (expensive unless you get extremely lucky on eBay) are good, especially the surface acoustic wave types which armour the screen at the same time as giving the most stable sense method, while not dimming the view. I decided to leave mine hooked up to sense touch after getting the mice sorted. There are moments when I know exactly what to touch, faster than I can think of any other way to make it happen. I have an old graphic tablet with a stylus and that actually works pretty well as an all-purpose mouse but the "left click" button is not well-placed ergonomically. And the spring inside is wonky and not replaceable. I considered a tablet but if the drawn surface doesn't correlate directly with screen pixels as an overlay, I can't use it. I can move a drawn line ok, just as with a mouse, but starting a line in some precise location, that's another matter. I might as well blindfold myself and start shooting at it, for all the good I can do. I used to like trackballs, have two, one wireless, and still use them sometimes, when I need a change. I like then too. It's the expense that puts me off them. I stll obsessed with the mechanics too (and the materials are amazing, in those things, lowest friction on any polymer I ever saw, and tiny nuggets of some substance that may or may not be industrial diamonds a mm wide, and polished). These optical mice amaze me even more though, because for the first (and only) time, I ceased to obsess over the mechanics, till something broke badly. I trust them to work, like I trust my own fingers. That's the only way it can feel better than some dumb-arse prosthetic. But as much as I hate to say it, NO mouse design has ever improved on the MS serial mouse ver 2.0A. (The shape of ver 1 might have been identical, I don't believe I ever saw one.) That's what I still use. Fortunately, my "newest" computer (7 yrs old) has 2 serial ports. I have no idea how well a serial- USB adapter would work. These opticals are deliberately staying close to that. But what they add works. The basic shape and proprtion of keys, etc, is more similar to the first mice than to anythign that has happened since. No weird 'ergonomic' assymetry, so they'd work just as well lefthanded, so long as the driver can support the swap, which the Logitech driver can. I hate all this stuff, I really do. I miss taking walks in the mountains and drinking from tiny streams of pure ice-cold water. I miss food that was actually food. I remember when airline cutlery was stainless steel. I miss being able to take an airplane without feeling like a pig in a cage surrounded by guys with guns under their jackets. And as much as I hate people, I also miss people actually talking to each other. Now, if anyone DOES talk to anyone else, AOT "texting" or using a cellphone (more and more people I know have NO land lines at all), it is usually ABOUT their new cellphone or iPad. It's sickening. And I hate the internet more and more every day. It's all so ridiculous. Dig your heels in, ignore the screams of 'UPGRADE UPGRADE UPGRADE', and those who feel the need to do the happy little Microsoft dance, and it's amazing how much of all that goes away. You know, somewhere, I think people still use spades to dig stuff. Yep, I did that not so long ago. Works for me. All the iPad owners in all the world will think I'm a luddite, but I know more about computers than most of them ever will. And I used to hate them too. So I learned to make them an extension of me, instead of letting their makers force me to become an extension of them. And like the simpler forms of mouse and keyboard, the best chance of making something likely to work as an extension to other people who think differently, is keep it simple, pare it down to the essentials, so what we see is what we get, and we can add extras easily, knowing what, where, and how to do it. Everyone thinks this way about their homes. If people were compelled to live in houses as they do with computers, many would choose to live in the streets, or become nomads, than live in a gilded cage that they have no control of. Human spirit rebels against that. Microsoft's 'service model' is doomed because they won't accept that. So it won't go on getting worse forever. |
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