When programming on a laptop: Mouse or Trackpad?

While a lot of programming and actions can be strictly keyboard driven, when you don't use the keyboard, do you reach for a mouse or use a trackpad?

I'm half expecting the vast majority to be #TeamTrackpad as you do get portability benefits.

• Do you use a Mouse or Trackpad? (Or just a keyboard shortcut master?)
• Why do you use that? (Faster, easier, more portable etc?)

Comments

[Giorgos Kontopoulos 👀]

When on a table I would use a mouse. I would use a touchpad if I am on a place where the mouse is not possible to use.

I have gone back and forth between using mouse/touchpad testing what is better and after a lot of trials I came to the conclusion that mouse is at least 2x faster to work with so I will use it most times.

[Pål Nes]

On a ThinkPad, the track point, because I can keep my hands on the keyboard. On a Macbook Pro, the trackpad, because it's accurate and responsive. On any other machine, a mouse, since everyone is using the cheapest trackpads they can get away with.

[Josef Aidt]

I had the same thought. On a macbook the trackpad is big and glides really well, and at that point it's too much to move my hand all the way to a mouse

[Halil Ibrahim Kayim]

I use the trackpad on my MacBook Pro. I feel like it's much faster to move your hand from the keyboard to the trackpad rather than to a mouse. I know the difference is less than a quarter of a second, but it feels annoying to use a mouse after being used to a trackpad. This, of course, depends heavily on the quality of the trackpad. MBP's trackpad feels just right, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on cursor accuracy, but other laptops' trackpads may not do it for me.

[Illya Kysil]

Trackball - works on any surface.

Additional benefit - other people won't dare to touch your machine :)

[Massimo Artizzu]

Hahaha that's great! 😆
Trackballs were more common once (late '90s), but some still use them.
The initial impact can be brutal, so it's not surprising almost nobody use them anymore, but once you get the hang of it a trackball can be really efficient (tested myself). Not like a mouse, but still:

• You can use it with minimal space
• No risk of carpal tunnel syndrome
• It hardly collects dust, so it's usually durable

I think it's a piece of hardware that deserves to be re-discovered.

[Josh Pike]

I actually use both. Mousing (or trackballing at the office) for most things, but the gestures (swiping between desktops e.g.) and 'throwing' (instead of 'scrolling') a page around are much easier/faster.

[STrRedWolf]

Mouse.

My hands are big enough that I will rest it on the trackpad, and that screws up where the mouse is on screen. Since I'm in Linux and have "Focus follows mouse" turned on, moving the mouse to another window means I'm not typing where I want it to be. And that's a bad thing.

No, better to have it disable the trackpad when I'm typing, and even better just disable the trackpad when I have a mouse in there.

[James Turner]

Never heard of "focus follows mouse" before. Do you mind me asking why you use that setting?

[STrRedWolf]

It's something I'm accustomed to when using PCs when I was in college. The default window manager was FVWM and it had a "where you type is what window the mouse is in" policy, aka "focus follows mouse." I find that it helps track where it is. Besides, web pages are so bloated I can hide the mouse cursor in all that fat. ;)

Windows doesn't do that, alas... well, not easily.

[It's Roderick!]

Can't use a trackpad for more than brief non-dev purposes. And I can't use laptop keyboards.
So I always carry both a wireless mouse and a mechanical keyboard with my laptop. Given my way, I'd get a laptop with a built-in mechanical keyboard, no trackpad at all.

[Shannon Crabill]

Mostly trackpad, since I'm on my laptop and it's difficult to use a mouse from the couch.

That said, using a mouse is faster and more efficient for me, most times.

[Thomas H Jones II]

Trackpad.

Hell, even when I was still using fixed-location workstations as my primary platforms, I bought keyboards that had touchpads in them. To me, every time I have to remove my hands from the keyboard to reach or an external pointer is a waste of precious time. Not only is there the time lost to reaching for the pointer and then using it, there's the time necessary to move your hand back to the keyboard and re-home your hands. Euw.

[Eljay-Adobe]

The MacBook Pro has one of the finest trackpads available. It is amazing. However, even the finest trackpad created so far by the big brains in Cupertino cannot cure me of my utter disdain and loathing of trackpads.

I use a mouse. I bring a mouse with me when I carry my MBP around.

I also bring a real keyboard with me too, if I expect to use the MBP for anything useful (like... programming). The keyboard I tote around is the Razer Blackwidow X Tournament Edition Chroma. It's an okay/acceptable keyboard, not my favorite (that'd be the IBM Model M -- best keyboard ever made). But the Blackwidow has a smaller footprint because they got rid of the number pad, making it slightly more carryable, and it fits in my laptop bag (swag from WWDC 2007).

The MBP may have the world's finest trackpad, but it has to have one of the worst keyboards.

Apple only made one decent keyboard, and that was the Apple Extended Keyboard M0115. All their other keyboards have been disappointment. They're gorgeous. But not functional. I think form should follow function, not vice versa.