I was working on a laptop the other day & I was plugging in the external mouse on it when the owner came over & said that she much prefered the external mouse to the laptop’s ‘clit’ mouse. I thought for a moment, looked at the laptop mouse, & sure enough it was in the middle of the keyboard, a little grey rubber button & I can see why she gave it that name.
But I prefer an external mouse too.
My Thinkpad has one. I have no preference between it or an external mouse. I have a hard time using a touchpad mouse though. I would never purchase a laptop that has one of those.
I prefer the touchpad to the ‘clit’ mouses. It feels awkward to using a little nubbin’ that’s in the middle of keyboard buttons to move the pointer. Though I like normal trackballs best. (How I wish I had a a wacom tablet though.)
I actually like the touchpad best. I’ve had laptops with the ‘clit’ mouse, the trakball, and my current one has a touch pad, set to “tap to click”. It took a little bit to get used to it, but now, I wouldn’t trade it. 
The problem I had with the clit one was that the rubber thingy that is over the clit wore through, and was essentially useless.
(looking over how that reads, I wish I had a better way to put it, but I don’t)
I’ve only had to use one of those once, and seldom see them; in fact, I didn’t think of them when I saw the thread title so I dove into this thread to see what the heck you were talking about. Yeah, cute name for them, better than “pencil-eraser mouse”. But clits are much too nice to name one of these damn things for them…
For me, in order of preference, with 10 being favorite tool:
optical mouse–10
regular mouse–9
graphics coord board–6
trackpad–4
trackball–2
graphics tablet–1
touch screen–1
pencil-eraser (clit) mouse–0
That’s for everyday all-purpose use.
The pencil-eraser mouse I used (IBM ThinkPad)…oh man! Aim at icon on Desktop. Overshoot and miss by an inch and a half. Make 7-8 looping swirls before coming within 10 pixels. Perhaps 4 additional careful nudges before I’m on it. Major shift of attention and hand placement to go to the clicker thingies to double-click it. And after my first try at choosing a menu item, I began using keystroke commands for everything possible.
[The graphics tablet rockets into the lead for art purposes, and the touch screen would fare better if someone figured out a way to prevent fingerprint-blurred screen syndrome. And the mice reap the benefits of me having had fifteen years’ experience using them, I don’t think I’d like them anywhere near as much if I’d had access to the other choices from the beginning]
I’ve got a Thinkpad, and the “pointing stick” erasermouse was one reason (one of many reasons) for the choice. I’ve used touchpads at work and I hate them. I usually end up brushing a thumb across the touchpad while editing a document, jump the cursor elsewhere, and get the document all screwed up.
Though I prefer an external mouse, the erasermouse is completely intuitive to me. I’m with Purd Werfect; I refuse to buy a portable computer with a touchpad.
My Toshiba came with a little bag of replacement rubber thingies. You can probably buy them at your local computer megastore.
I love my clit mouse. I far prefer it to a touchpad. It’s one of the reasons I bought a Toshiba.
Hmmm, I’ve never heard it called the “clit” mouse before. I always called it “the nipple”, although now that I think about it, “clit” makes more sense.
Anyhow, my Dell has a touchpad and a clit. I disabled the touchpad after about ten minutes for the exact reason that OrcaChow gave. The clit is kind of annoying, but I found that I got used to it after a little practice. To be honest, I usually just pack my mouse when I take my laptop somewhere.
I’ve personally called it an eraser – I have had two toshiba laptops, both with the eraser, and I absolutely love it for normal windows navigation. I wouldnt use anything else. If you gave me a laptop with a touch pad I’d trade it for a laptop with an eraser. Now for gameplay, thats completely different – give me back my optical mouse.
My husband’s laptop has one of those little mouse buttons on it. (I’ve never heard it called anything before, to my knowledge…) I find it impossible to use – always too fast or too slow. However, I’ve heard that it becomes easier and possibly more convenient than a normal mouse as you get used to it. But I’m not really interested in giving it a chance.
At my company we call them “nipples”, and they’re universally disliked. I’d much rather use the touchpad models.
I love them and I’ve never bought a laptop without them - that’s 4 laptops since 1994. They are great for most Windows uses, i.e. menus, selecting icons, and web browsing. Even for photo editing and drawing, I find them to be better than touchpads. It takes some getting used to but once you do, it’s very efficient. It is right in the middle of the keyboard so you don’t have to shift your hand to use it.
I’ve found that the true IBM pointers are the best, and they have gotten better over the years. Newer IBM pointers have a very rough surface (like coarse sandpaper) so your finger doesn’t slip. They do gum up fast, but genuine IBM replacements are cheap and not hard to find.
In fact, at work I have the “clit” mouse on my desktop computer. IBM makes a space-saver keyboard with one - the keyboard itself is small (no numeric keypad), and by eliminating the mouse I save even more desk space. (You think Japanese office workers have small desks? You should see Japanese grad student offices…)
My laptop has a touchpad, and I’ve found one serious drawback to it–when the air is damp, it stops working. The pad would become insensitive to the touch, although the computer would still acknowledge the pad’s existance. The manufacturer (Compaq) admitted the problem, but they assumed that I could find somewhere to work that would have A/C or a dehumidifier. Not in England I wouldn’t. Hence, it was a serious drawback to me.
Also, any external shock to the computer seems to disable it. Said external shock has also blitzed the monitor, but that’s another story entirely.
Both the clit mouse and the trackpad are devil spawn. I just take my regular mouse with me (my laptop only leaves my desk a half-dozen times a month). If I had to choose, I would go with the trackpad.
Though when I lived in Hawaii, I would have chosen the clit moue as the air is ALWAYS damp and the problem Duke referenced becomes very difficult.
Baglady is sitting next to me with her WACOM tablet, but I haven’t ever used it (ewwww, iMac!).