I Hate Mice.

Computer mice, that is. As long as they stay outside, the little fuzzy kind are fine with me.

For a couple of years at the house, I have been using a pair of Kensington Orbits that I got at the Goodwill Computer Works. The first one was a serial mouse in which I installed a white LED to light up the trackball. We wore it out. Then I installed a USB Orbit. That one, too, has finally given up the ghost. Prior to that, I was using a many-years-old Kensington Expert Mouse White which stopped working altogether one day; I think that one was subjected to ESD (fried). The USB Orbit has taken quite a beating, with both #1 and #2 playing their computer games with grubby hands.... one of the switches has begun operating intermittently. If you want to hold a left-click it won't hold, and if you want a single-click it will give you a double. Boo. Not fun, but useable with frustration.

Then I went to edit a photo in Photoshop and you NEED to be able to hold the left button down for some editing operations. FAIL.

So I went and dug in the computer stuff box and right now I am using a Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical USB mouse. It's actually quite a good mouse, as far as that goes. But I'm a fan of the trackball. No running out of table or mousepad with a trackball. No hunting for the trackball when you want to move your cursor without looking down at the input device (with a mouse, it can be several inches from where you expect it to be on your desk top).

I am (to be kind to myself) quite frugal. It may come as a surprise to those that know me, but in order to be happy with my input device at work (doing photo editing for hours every day) I went and spent $70 of my own money on a Kensington Expert Mouse Optical trackball. It's a thing of beauty. As always with a Kensington trackball, the rolling action is smooth as silk, the programmable buttons are VERY handy, and the scroll ring is much easier to use than the wheel found on some other models. 5 of 5 stars for this thing.

Some people have complained about gritty rolling of Kensington trackballs. They are doing it wrong. You CAN NOT have a perfectly clean ball and expect it to roll smoothly. It needs a very thin coating of oil on the ball to get the silky smooth operation. That film will build up naturally when the oil from your face (which you touch all the time without realizing it) gets transferred to the ball from your fingertips. If you can't stand the grittiness, do this: Clean the ball, clean the ruby rollers, and remove all the accumulated dirt from the well under the ball. Then rub your nose or forehead with your fingers and rub your fingers on the ball. Repeat the transfer of oil from your face to the ball until the ball is fairly well coated. Then install it back into the trackball base and roll it around a few times to coat the ruby rollers with oil.

It's pretty smooth now, right? Nice.

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P.S. I am a trained electronics technician. I'm going to take a switch out of the dead serial Orbit and install it into the USB one. I have replaced switches before (heck, I think I replaced THREE in the old white Expert Mouse) and it's not that bad if you can solder at all well. God willing I'll have a working trackball again in under half an hour... It's no Expert Mouse, but it's better than a mouse-mouse any day.

edit/update: Great success! I replaced the switch after I got lunch in the oven, and I replaced the top housing as well, so the nicer of the two Orbits' housings would be the one in use. The date codes on these trackballs are 9 and 10 years old, and the one that failed had been modified. The one that was failing, the switch was replaced and it's back on line! Yay!