I’ve been using mice a long time? How long? The first one I used was on a Xerox Alto 45+ years ago. The first little computer that came with a mouse and a GUI.
Many, many, many years ago Microcenter had a sale on a trackball thing. I got one to try it out. I didn’t use it very long. Awwwwkward. Went into the old computer junk box, then off to Goodwill. Never looked back.
The innovation of the trackwheel was a big plus.
I use a 5 button mouse now and use XBMC to map things. Rarely use the two extra buttons.
My current mouse-related demon are “gestures”. Nope, never will use them. Have to keep turning them off all over the place.
I might move my mouse 2" to cover my 43" screen. But have no problem with very fine drafting/cartography work. I code mostly now though. I’m a GIS Applications Engineer. That involves a lot of fine cut and paste of text (in the long run, that’s mostly what coders/programmers do [well besides planning, testing and cussing]).
Took a while to get used to the 43" instead of two 21" jobs. But it is much better once you get used to docking different screens and remote computers. No bezel to deal with. You can do pretty much whatever you want.
Mine is a 43" Samsung curved. Unfortunately it does not appear to be available now. I think they make a 48" but that’s a bit over the top for me at my desk. I think I would go up instead of wider. But, don’t need it and hope to retire in a few years, and this is my own personal hardware.
Ooooo. I just gave my self a weird idea. I just bought a 65" OLED TV for living room. Uh oh. I’m sure it could probably do it. Just cast my computer to it I suppose. TV is still in the box. I might have to at least check that out. Hmmmm. Just to test. I do need my own office space. It’s not gonna be the living room. That would be sort of frightening and not healthy at all.
I have two 21 inch monitors but, like you, my boss has one very big one. I like my setup better because I have certain things set up for the left and certain things set up for the right, and I’m used to popping them up and down and matching them at will. It may just be a matter of having done it that way first and for quite a while before seeing the single monitor method.
So I am sitting at the office now and happily trackballing away!
It works absolutely perfect for what I do at work. I love the feel of inertia as I spin the ball this way and that. I had forgotten the joy of using a Kensington trackball.
Back when I was a wee lad of 18 and had to tie my dinosaur up to the hitching post out front of the drafting place where I worked after school, I remember doing circuit diagrams for the auto industry on Mylar. We didn’t use ink; we used what they called film pencils, a thing I have never seen since, that left a line much blacker than traditional pencils. That year or two in old-school drafting, combined with working at the printed circuit shop down the road (my drafting boss hooked me up with his friend), provided some amazing experience in parts of industry that have been completely and forever changed by technology.
Though most of my work was hand-drawn in pencil (with my boss griping about my lettering), we did have one computer there running an early form of Autocad. There was pen that you used like a light pen, but it actually functioned via a super fine mesh of wires on the surface of the monitor–it felt like the monitor had a very fine black gauze on the surface.
I remember taking the pen apart to see how it worked and it broke. The next day my boss asked me about it, and, with a bit of a smile, he said “You took it apart, didn’t you?” and I had to hang my head in shame. He then explained what it cost and told me to accept that it works by PFM. Pure ____ Magic.
There was also a mouse pad kind of thing that was like a drafting board–you could tape a drawing onto its surface, and it had a tethered mouse with a crosshair reticle lens that seemed to have a coil of fine wire surrounding the lens. This was used to digitize hand-made drawings.
I used the Autocad “light pen” thing quite a bit, but never digitized any drawings with that ancient mouse tablet device.
Yeah, I was that way with my two 21" jobs. Pretty much do the same with the 43". A programmer I work with has two 21" side by side, and another on top. I think he just has the one on top just constantly monotoring network health.
I checked how much space I’m using for me mouse last night. It’s about 2"x2" there’s clutter around that space, but i could move my hand father if i wanted to. I don’t, though.
Since switching from a mechanical mouse to an optical mouse menu years ago i don’t use a mousepad, because i no longer need to. The surface of my desk has enough visual irregularity to be a clear surface for my optical mouse.
I’m amazed at that. I guess I’ve never tried a single time to adjust mouse sensitivity. I have a mouse plugged into my laptop because I loathe touch pads, so I might try to play around with that.
So, there are mice where you press a “dpi” button on the mouse to conveniently adjust the sensitivity, without having to go through any menus or anything.
If you like dual monitors, that’s fine but nowadays 21" isn’t very big for a monitor. My company sent me a pair of 27" 4K monitors for my work-from-home setup though I think mostly they deploy 24" monitors.
I mean two inches by two inches. And yes, i mean in addition to the space the mouse takes. But, like, one inch to each side, one inch up, and one inch down from “resting position”.
Makes sense. That’s what I would have guessed I used myself before measuring, and does appear to be exactly what I use vertically. I was surprised at how little lateral space I need.
This thread has gotten me to spend way too much time watching my hand. It’s gotten weird, like when you overfocus on an autonomous process or a common word.
Same. Except for one desk I use that is a high gloss black surface. Surprises me that people still use mouse pads. For the most part there is no point in them.
Yeah, I have a laptop, but really only use it for personal emails and stuff, not work.
When COVID hit and it looked like I would be working from home, I bought a Starlink dish and installed it (including using ropes and a new climbing harness). And since my home computer was getting long in the tooth, I also bought a new tower, and the 43" monitor. I think I’m the only person that still remotes into their old desktop at work. I keep being told that it is going to be cloned into a VM (virtual machine) but it has not happend. Whatever. I’m not a network/sys admin guy.
Our moose are about 6 feet. A tiny one would be cute though (sorry, couldn’t resist)
We have a “Technology Coach” whose job it is to help teachers learn and utilize the tech we have for them. It turns out he is taking steroids for “Tennis Elbow”, but he doesn’t play tennis. What he does is move his arm a lot because of mouse usage. I recommended a track ball. He said he may try that.
Huh. Not this CAD guy (GIS actually) nor any of his co-workers.
I do mostly write code nowadays, but still play with the maps.
I mean, there is nothing wrong with the track ball it it suits you. But this person moves his arm to use a mouse??? The “Technology Coach” needs to adjust the mouse.
I mean, there is nothing wrong with the track ball it it suits you. But this person moves his arm to use a mouse??? The “Technology Coach” needs to adjust the mouse.