An online survey by users show a majority prefer a trackpoint (pointing stick) mouse. Reviewers are 90 percent otherwise. What’s wrong with this picture. I went out to various sites to look at laptops…and all the help-me-choose features completely omit the pointing device as a criterion.
In picking a new laptop, if I get down to that, I swear to you, more than screens or other stuff, more than fancy covers, lighted keys (I couldn’t care less)—it’s the pointing device, stupid. If you use a laptop at top speed, you are utterly dependent on the style of reach you’re used to. Period.
So what’s with these people? I’m halfway convinced it’s power games among manufacturers, willingness to use certain suppliers, exclusive contracts, patents, whatever else is going on. But in my own opinion, I’d as soon input direct code than reach off the homing keys and break my rhythm and train of thought to find a mouse and use it. It’d be faster.
The only device that will work for me, the way I think and use a keyboard, is a trackpoint. Right now they’re being reserved for ‘high end business’ machines. Meaning you pay 3x the normal cost to get a trackpoint if you don’t go IBM.
Frustrated. Looks like I’m going to go on refurbing this machine until it absolutely can’t run software. I’m into my 3rd keyboard on it and I’ve maxed out the memory, and I’m feeling the need for more room, but it ain’t gonna happen if I have to use a mouse. No way, no how, not in a million years.
So what specific models of laptop does anybody know that have this pointing device. IBM, I know. They’re saying Toshiba. I don’t know. Dell, but they’re phasing it out of anything affordable. Information, anyone?
It’s because my fingers never leave the homing keys, the left hand stays positioned while the right flicks 1/2″ over and engages the mouse stick, the left hand never moves while it clicks, just a thumb press little different than the space bar, and the mouse move leaves the middle right finger perfectly positioned to swing back to k. I used a trackpad for several years, and then got the trackstick, and don’t want to go back.
What JCrow says about a keyboard switch to turn the trackpad off is appealing: I don’t hit it often, but the lunatics who design computer keyboards have now sold all manufacturers on the notion the touchpad should be under the left hand. This is beyond nuts. What part of “the brain is symmetrical” don’t they get?
From a person who are forced by one’s employer to use a Lenovo laptop I feel I have a duty to say that they suck.
The hardware is just too cheap to be stable, for any length of time. Without doing anything acrobatic I’m facing my second total wipe/OS reinstall in less than 18 months, and that’s only my latest machine…
Actually, after over 18 years of daily use of computers in my work, and spending most of the time evaluating how other people manage to use (or not) computers and the applications and services that run on them, I’d say it’s impossible to get a good computer. It can never get better than ‘good enough’.
The support centre Dell has for Sweden is great, though. And in my experience; as all computers sucks having a great support centre makes a difference. I know they have a bad reputation in the US, though.
The problem with Dell is that they farm out their service to either India or Pakistan and do not thoroughly check out the language skills of the person involved; also there may be a cultural difference. US users, stereotypically in a blazing hurry, are likely to want to skip a procedure, saying, yeah, I did that, can we go to—(x)? And if the tech wants to doggedly stick to his book, that’s likely to get a hot flare of temper.
And then there are the idiots: I had a key that was, yes, broken. The spring, I said, was broken. Now, either the gal truly was an idiot or there is some ambiguity about ‘broken’ when translated mentally to Urdu. The tech suggested reinstalling Windows would be the answer. I simply hung up and went after another one.
But thank you re the heads-up on Lenovo. While I don’t want what the HP want to sell us, a computer designed for the military, with a cast-iron case, to get a trackpoint—I can’t use one made of tissue and tacky-tape, either. A 100 wpm typist and devout shooter-gamer can take a keyboard apart in 6 months if it isn’t sturdy. I know. I replace mine—a lot—and it’s fairly tough.
The difference here in Sweden with Dell being it’s a local support centre, and they speak swedish. And very service minded. If a thing is broken (happened once with each of the machines) I get a replacement faster than the postal service can blink.
The company I’m working for has an offshore support centre located in Bangalore. Some of the people employed there speaks a heavily accented english, and most people in Sweden while being reasonably good at english balks at trying to explain a problem in a foreign language to someone who don’t seem to understand and whose questions you can’t decipher. They too suggest reinstalling Windows as the heal-all and it follows that I never call them.
It could be a cultural difference speaking here?
Anyway, the Lenovo stuff we have at my workplace is flimsy. My bet is they won’t hold up to some power typing/whacking, and besides, all IBM-heritage machines come with some real quirky keyboard set-ups and preset function keys.
I know people who work for IBM’s consultancy branch, and most of them are on iBooks.
JCrow, your e-mail hasn’t come through yet. I’m looking for it, and I checked my spam filter. Try it with COMLINK in the subject line: that’s one way to dodge the filter.
The funny part is that the usual translation for “broken”, ṫûṫa in Urdu *is* ambiguous…
It’s because my fingers never leave the homing keys, the left hand stays positioned while the right flicks 1/2″ over and engages the mouse stick, the left hand never moves while it clicks, just a thumb press little different than the space bar, and the mouse move leaves the middle right finger perfectly positioned to swing back to k. I used a trackpad for several years, and then got the trackstick, and don’t want to go back.
I do the same thing too, but the problem is that my brain is not wired for the mouse stick for some reason. The old IBM thinkpad ones, at least, were just not responsive enough for me.
Re: the hard drive issue, you can get cheap external hard drives or even flash drives of several GB if all you need is more space. Unless your machines aren’t USB-enabled but USB has been around for some time.
That is a point. And 😆 re Urdu for ‘broken’.
Relating to the whole language translation thing, I was in Japan when a Japanese tourist was shot and killed in the South when he went looking for direction to a Halloween party, secure in his own safety, and ran into a my-home-is-my-castle type with a gun. Mr. Castle yelled, “Freeze!” This Japanese had never heard that word as a command (if at all).
The reaction in the Japanese press was to teach everyone this important word. Necessarily, the word had to he put into katakana, to be pronounced. So millions of Jamanese were taught the word フリツ, fu-ri-tsu, which sounds roughly like foo-ree-zoo, with a hard R, like the English R in “very”.
I somehow think the chances of a Southerner saying fooreezoo with an English accent are remote.
I remember that. Having been shot at by a nutcase isolationist type (I was 14 at the time), I have limited forgiveness for people who fire at imaginary threats. I hope Mr. Castle was carted away to the home for the dangerously confused.
I think the best thing to yell if you’re confronted is “pizza delivery!”
Unfortunately, Mr. “Castle” was not charged, if I recall correctly, having the right to shoot anyone on his property he felt was threatening, with paranoid threats being as valid as legitimate threats and no doctrine of innocent passage.
More amusingly, a Texan told me about the Texas grounds for justifiable homicide:
1. Self-defense;
2. Found him in bed with your wife;
3. Needed killing.
I think a pizza delivery claim with no pizza would come under (3).
I have found that if you’re walking a dog, you can go practically anywhere unmolested. I think the presence of the dogs automatically removes you as a threat. I’ve waved at people coming out of a crackhouse on one block and the motorcycle cops on the next.
But, I’d never thought of calling out “Pizza!” before. That’s a very good one that I’ll have to remember.
I’ll be sure to remember that (pizza delivery!) next time I cross the pond.
Speaking of weird stories, that’s almost as interesting as the freighter that nearly went down due to tapioca pudding.
Probably it wasn’t pudding when they shipped it!
You would be correct:
http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/tapioca.asp (warning, arm your popup blokers).
It ain’t just tapioca that’s a hazard to ships–there have been cases where a cargo of rice proved fatal to a ship as well.
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CJ and Jane, re: your interest in 64-bit OS versus 32-bit, I note that Costco is now selling all, or nearly all, its laptops with 64-bit Vista, at least the HP ones. Among other things, that increased availability and demand should dramatically accelerate the development of 64b drivers and 64b-compatible versions of Your Favorite Apps.
Sigh, and I just found out that Calibre, essential to the e-book process, won’t run on 64. Although is there something about a dual installation? Can you run 32 on a 64 bit machine?
I’d first try the Compatibility Wizard. It’s a feature whereby Windows can emulate an earlier version. It exists in XP and subsequent OSs. As long as you can get the install process to run (since that will be running under the basic OS), right-click the desktop shortcut for the program, select the “Compatibility” tab, and choose to your heart’s content. I have had pretty good luck with this on XP and Vista 32b.
See the story ‘The Cargo of Rice’ in Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C. S. Forester. The Hornblower stories are very much worth reading, as are the navy books by Captain Frederick Marryat.
Marryat actually lived through everything he wrote about – he joined the Royal Navy in 1806 at the age of 14, and served continuously throughout the rest of the Napoleonic wars (including the War of 1812), and some colonial expeditions in the 1820s. He fought in many ship-to-ship battles and other naval actions.
He was a very distinguished officer, noted for bravery on several occasions, including singlehandedly saving his ship as a young midshipman by going aloft in a hurricane to cut away the mainyard. On three different occasions he dived into the sea to save sailors who had fallen overboard. He was at St. Helena when Napoleon died, and brought the news back to England. He rose to the rank of Captain before retiring in 1830 to write full time. He wrote more than 30 very successful novels, and was a friend of Charles Dickens.
He was was an enlightened and liberal-minded officer, with many ideas ahead of his time. He was refused a knighthood (by the King personally) because of his strong opposition to press-gangs. But the French awarded him the Legion of Honour.
For anyone interested in authentic, detailed eyewitness accounts of navy battles and shipboard life in the great age of sail, his work is highly recommended. It is, of course, long out of copyright.
See
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/m#a627
Frank Mildmay is his first book, and more-or-less autobiographical.
The best of the rest are Mr. Midshipman Easy and Peter Simple.
Ha! As a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, I was assigned to read several C.S. Forester titles, including this one, (and several similar authors) as part of a class I took (Literature of the Sea). I was deemed unpopular and a trouble-maker when it turned out (I let slip) that I had already read every book on the list except Melville’s “White Jacket.”
Of course you guys have read Patrick O’Brian…wonderful sea-faring books, giving you no mercy where it comes to explaining the difference between a sloop and a xebec.
I think the rice cargo (as with many others) is actually based on an incident.