Comments on: The computer mouse turns 40 – and is facing death

By: Ken

Ken — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:48:28 +0000

I use a touchpad on laptops and mouse on desktop. People who complain about touchpads usually don’t have them configured properly.

Turn off tapping and scrolling takes care of most of the issues. I’ve watched people looking like birds with a busted wing when they attempted to get mousing room when traveling.

I’ve spent a far amount of time over the year needing to use different laptops. The little eraser joysticks, the old clip on thumbelina’s.

It’s not intuitive, it’s learned and familiar. Having a touchpad centered where you can use use both hands is pretty handy once you get used to it.

I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

By: a non e mous

a non e mous — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:28:09 +0000

Quote from the article above:

“Most people who use laptops already choose to use the built-in touchpad rather than a mouse.”

Since when?

Certainly not in my experience. In fact, I see just the opposite – everyone I can think of who owns or uses a notebook with a built-in touchpad uses a mouse in preference.

Even those who have tried to go mouseless eventually gave in out of frustration when they realised that there are some tasks that are intuitively easy to do one-handed with a mouse, but much more difficult to do with a touchpad. One that readily springs to mind is drag-and-drop

By: james

james — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:20:02 +0000

The mouse still has many years left. The technology may be there but how it is being used is not practical for most scenarios right now. Further innovation in this area is required before the mouse dying. Who wants to hold something up? The mouse is laid flat on a surface. Even for touch screens, you need to keep your hand up in the air. For long usage, this will make the arm tired. Till date, I do not see a mouse replacement.

Until computer manufactuerers themselves design computers differently the mouse is not going to disappear.