Am I the only one who prefers the nipples on thinkpads?
I have one on the Dell laptop I'm using (which also has a touchpad). Once in a while I try to use it, but I find it almost impossible control with any kind of precision. Changing the sensitivity doesn't help much.
I first tried that device on the first Thinkpads that had it, back in the 90's or whenever it was. I have always had the same reaction to it.
How do you use it? Is this just a matter of getting used to it, and if it is, how long does it take?
I am in the market for a new laptop, so perhaps I should give them a chance. Not really for the pointers, but they do seem to be fine laptops overall.
On my own Lenovo, I use the nipple exclusively, and touchpad is disabled completely. I had played Quake vs other human players with the nipple and won, and I find it vastly superior to any kind of touchpad.
I'm not a classic touch typist, but my fingers tend to be near the home row most of the time, having the pointing device one or two keys away, and the mouse buttons next to space, is a big benefit. Having to shift my left hand to the left, and right hand down 3", just to move the pointer, feels like a lot of effort.
I use point-to-focus (but not raise) a fair bit too, as moving the mouse is almost as easy as alt-tab, I use it a lot to switch between terminal windows.
That's completely immaterial to the precision of it, which is why I'm unable to use it: I never managed to aim at something, I take ages to actually reach a button to click on it (either under- or over-shooting it unless I move the cursor extremely slowly) let alone select some characters in the middle of text.
I have that issue on neither trackpad nor mouse, and can use both reliably precisely.
I actually just used the touchpad on said laptop with my thumb, to move the arrow to the 'reply' button (I have an inbuilt distrust of tab on websites). And now I used the trackpoint to resize the text box to read my reply, again without thinking about it.
I suspect that when I'm in "doing" mode I use the trackpoint, when I'm in "consuming" mode I use the pad.
I'd pay significantly more over already inflated Apple prices to have my MBP with a trackpoint and no touchpad.
Now maybe I could get better at the precision piece for trackpoint overtime, but if you use trackpoint you also lose the ability to do multi-touch (two finger) scrolling, which I think is a huge time saver, b/c you can scroll without having to find the scroll bar and/or moving your hand over to the arrow/page keys.
Macbook took a couple months of adjustment. But there is almost no use of muscle whatsoever when moving the mouse on a macbook. Thinkpads feel incredibly straining in comparison now. And scrolling on a macbook...completely effortless. There is nothing like it.
The nipple on every other manufacturer I have tried isn't even usable. The nipple on the Thinkpad is god like. I used to hear of designers prefer it for Photoshop editing back in the days before Lenovo.
That said, I am using a MacBook Pro now with macOS and have been for years because I tend to spend way too much time tinkering to get things perfect.
These days, I still have a Lenovo X200 for Linux and still use the pointer there although I'm generally happy with trackpads across the board. (Except on Windows apparently. I had to get a mouse for my 17" Alienware laptop because the trackpad still drove me crazy.)
My X220 nipple unfortunately became a little unreliable. Needs calibration often (auto moving cursor) and sometimes one direction works better than others. It's annoying, especially since the touchpad is just unusable.
Any suggestions? Hardware or software issue? Would a new rubber nipple hood thingy help?
It works with strain gauges[1]. Thats why you can control the speed of the pointer, not just the direction. When you get used to it, its quite effective.
You can pull the rubber nub off and try it, that shouldn't help but it might. If its sticking in a position that isn't "Neutral"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick
Oddly IBM made a mouse with that nub pointer thing. It worked so much better that any sort of wheel for pointing and scrolling, but I left it when I left IBM many many moons ago.
Having said that, this is the beauty of Linux, let people use what they like, being devices or window managers.
I wish that they made a full size version of it - I miss the extra keys.
for casual use a touch pad is better and for gaming a mouse is better.