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Comment by ginko | Hacker News Reader

There was a bit of a dark age but by now there's way better keyboards than the MS ergonomic.

One discontinued MS peripheral that is still quite sought after but not in that list would be the Trackball Explorer[1]. There's sadly very little competition in the large trackball space. DIY designs are starting to crop up[2], but it's nowhere near where the mechanical keyboard scene is today.

[1] https://www.trackballmouse.org/microsoft-trackball-explorer/

[2] https://github.com/jfedor2/scroll-ring-trackball

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Elecom HUGE is a fantastic daily driver for me.

https://www.amazon.com/ELECOM-M-HT1DRBK-Wireless-Trackball-M...

Mx Ergo is great as a thumb trackball, the Kensington trackballs are well reviewed, elecom has the giant mice and I think l-trac mice were bought out by x-key and they still exist and you have ploopy that came out of diy from Reddit.

I have the mx ergo which I bought to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome (not that I got a problem, but few persons around started having it).

And I wouldn't recommend it, I end up having some pain in my right thumb, that stopped when I stopped using it.

However this is just my experience.

Try it again if you have it in a drawer, its funky to get use to like re-training a muscle. Maybe try the Ergo Plus instead, I don't like the rubber material on the top but the added angle has my hand resting on it naturally.

I stopped using it a month ago, after having a pain in my thumb that was there constantly and I never had. Now, it does not hurt anymore. I do have the mx ergo plus.

I never had any problem with any mouse, it is the fact that I need to move the thumb so much. Also I might have a job which is more intensive in mouse than most people coding.

Or perhaps is that the "celtic hand" runs in my family and it is not good to use. I am afraid I will have to sell it, which I don´t particularly like because it costed me quite a lot.

I have a pair of Kensington Expert Mouse full size trackballs (optical, 4 button with scroll wheel, and USB) that are both over a decade old and still work great. Kensington still seem to sell this same model.

> There was a bit of a dark age but by now there's way better keyboards than the MS ergonomic.

Do you have any examples? Ideally that are the same price as the Ergo was (and probably will be) at $59?

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