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Comment by kwanbix | Hacker News Reader

I had my first TrackPoint contact when I joined IBM. They gave me a ThinkPad 755CD. They still owned the PC Division. There was no touchpad, so it took me about 30~60 minutes to get used to the trackpoint (maybe less). Since them I have had countless ThinkPads, personal and at work, an I always disable the touchpad entirely. I am sure that if most people had to use the trackpoint, they won't want to go back.

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I was really into using my trackpoint until suddenly my index finger literally started trembling uncontrollably whenever I tried using it. I think its because it requires too much force to move the cursor or I guess my ligaments are that weak although Im still young. Sadly had to give up using it since it was quite convenient

You can / should change the sensitivity so it doesn't require so much force. I like it to move all the way across the screen with very little effort ; if you're getting finger strain, you should look into its settings.

I agree, look into the sensitivity. On my x250 the trackpoint was almost unusable until I increased the sensitivity/acceleration

Get a fresh cap! The caps only last about a year of heavy use. You can find replacements on amazon and elsewhere. It doesn't even matter if it's really oem, a fresh third party one will still be much better than a worn oem one.

Trackpoint was so vastly superior to touchpads for the majority of the existence of the laptop that it's only natural that people that were computing when that was the case just completely eschew the touchpad on their laptop, even to this day. That plus the fact that there's little impetus to change (unless you force yourself by purchasing a laptop without a nub).

With that being said, I think Apple finally nailed the trackpad. It's far better than those original trackpads that came on ThinkPads that was so comically small you couldn't really use it on top of absolutely horrendous drivers. I think for the most part trackpads on Windows laptops are pretty competent as well, at least on the higher end models. Windows precision drivers went a long way to matching the experience of using a trackpad on the Mac. On Linux the basics are mostly fine though it's still kind of a mixed bag.

I thought I preferred trackpoint; turns out I don't.

How do you scroll with the trackpoint? I have a ThinkPad and the trackpoint is nice, but I always end up back on the touchpad for two finger scrolling. I used to use scroll bars, but they are so small these days that they’re really only useful as an indication of where you are in a document.

Middle click with thumb, mouse with index finger for moving through the document.

A proper trackpoint is supposed to have three buttons. The middle button works the same as on a desktop mouse: while holding the button, moving the cursor scrolls the page.

Among the few laptops that still include a trackpoint at all, I'm seeing more and more omit the third button, rendering the nub a vestigial ornament, requiring a fallback, as you've said, to the touchpad. I'm very disappointed; should I ever need to buy a new laptop, I expect to find myself up the proverbial creek.

Middle click and moving the trackpoint up and down works for me.

Hold down the middle button and drag. Some older models don't support this and with some Linux distros/DEs you have to configure it manually.

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