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?)
Latest comments (34)
I have been trying to switch to the Trackpad for a few weeks now, just feels so hard to use!
Trackball. Anyone using a mouse is in a state of sin.
While I like the gestures in the Trackpad, the mouse do feel a lot more accurate and natural.
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.
Never heard of "focus follows mouse" before. Do you mind me asking why you use that setting?
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.
I have a MacBook and a ThinkPad. The ThinkPad Trackpad is not so good and the palm resistance is so worse that it doesn't even work. So, I prefer a Mouse when working on ThinkPad. But the MacBook trackpad is quite good so I prefer trackpad there.
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.
A vertical mouse.
I only have a mouse with me so that I can play MechWarrior when I need a break.
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.
I use the keyboard for almost every shortcut that I can remember. I’m always amazed when I watch colleagues using their mouse how slow it is compared to keyboard.
When there is absolutely no way could sensibly use the keyboard, I use a mouse. Only when I’m in a meeting room, at home on my couch or in a plane, I would use a trackpad.
Bingo! It used to annoy the piss out of me during the earlier parts of the window-manager wars where you'd end up with different key combos depending on which WM you were stuck with. Pissed me off when I had to move to a Mac for a few years (since, at the time, its key-combos were different from the WMs used by both the UNIX and Windows-based systems of the time). ...And don't even get me started on office productivity software updates whose primary change seemed to be in the shortcut-mappings.
As mice (and excessive use of trackpads) cause wrist pain for me, I rarely use a mouse at all. I am using vim as my editor and firefox with a vim plugin for browsing.
If I have to use the mouse, I use the trackpoint on my ThinkPad
Obviously the ideal end-goal is to master hotkeys, which really isn't that hard with a bit of patience. The speed difference of smashing down a hotkey combo while your hands are already on the keyboard compared to moving your hand over to grab the mouse, move it accurately to the correct area of pixels on the screen and then to the next pixels for each follow-on click is massive.
For everything else, I avoid using the laptop inputs completely. A regular keyboard and mouse is far more comfortable and ergonomic for anything but the shortest of simple tasks. Another reason is that I'd rather get dirt or spillages on a keyboard/mouse than my laptop, especially given how close the screen gets to those dirty keys when you close it.
As for on the move, if there isn't space on the train's table, I'll have the mouse on my lap or seat next to me. Not a fan of using a trackpad on a bumpy ride.
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.
Since I work about 2 hours daily in the train (to and from work), I use both.
Trackpad on the go.
MagicMouse and external keyboard (and a second monitor) on the desk in my office.
A mouse, definitely.
Actually, being forced to use a trackpad sometimes (on the train, in meetings, etc.) convinced me to create even more keyboard shortcuts, so now I do 95% of the actions with the keyboard anyway.
The only exceptions are some actions that are not "shortcuttable" (like resizing the sidebars on the IDEs) or actions I don't do often (like clicking the "new email" or the "send" button)