Send a Tip
RSS Feed
Follow us on Twitter
If the head honcho over at Gizmodo feels the need to praise trackpads, I can’t help but rebuttal about TrackPoints. (I thought the industry term was touchpad? I must be out of the loop.)
TrackPoint. Pointing stick. Red dot. Nub. Keyboard nipple. There have been many names for for it, including some more vulgar ones. Whatever you call it, this highly efficient and accurate pointing device is the one of choice for me, and many other ThinkPad enthusiasts.
I’ve been using ThinkPads for about the past 7 years, admittedly not long compared to others. I had a desktop as my primary machine for probably more than half that time, but quickly became adjusted to the TrackPoint on my ThinkPad T42 and the trackpad/touchpad fell to dis-use. Eventually I decided I liked the small footprint of the X Series and lost the trackpad altogether.
Think about it. The distance it takes to move your hand from the QWERTY to the trackpad, usually below the spacebar, is much closer than the distance it takes to drop your hand on a mouse, reorientate your arm/wrist and fingers into place. And a trackpad’s control scheme uses a finger, which has a lot more dexterity than an arm/wrist you use when handling a mouse. Also, the future is multitouch trackpads. No other control scheme can match the potential of pinching/scrolling with multiple fingers, zooming, etc.
The distance involved in moving your pointer finger from its resting place on the keyboard to the central point between the G/B/H keys is less than moving a hand to the touchpad, and far less than moving to a mouse. Rather than relying on relatively inaccurate capacitance readings, the TrackPoint detects applied force through resistive strain gauges. Whether editing a photo or lining up for the perfect headshot, I can move the cursor a few pixels at a time if I like. Maybe my fingers are too large to be precise, but I never had that kind of control with a touchpad.
He also touches on multitouch and I will give him that – it is a neat feature. But until wide-spread software support makes it a useful technology outside of the Apple world, I’ll hold off on calling it “revolutionary” as others in the industry have.
The TrackPoint lets me keep my hands in the typing position. The middle button lets me scroll vertically and horizontall with ease, something that is also very imprecise on a touchpad. I have introduced several people, even those who are on the lower end of computer savviness, to TrackPoint and they all loved it. My significant other can switch between her Dell touchpad and my ThinkPads’ TrackPoints with ease.
Learn more about TrackPoints at Wikipedia and shout out your TrackPoint love in the comments!
P.S. Gizmodo readers agree with me
Loading ...
I wouldn’t let it get to you. Those editors over at Gizmodo are all mac fanboys. They love everything Apple. I honestly hate Apple’s new Touchpad. No mouse button? No thanks. Multitouch is a feature I don’t think I’ll ever use. My significant other’s new IdeaPad has a multitouch capable touchpad – it does nothing in Windows7. Even so, the only real use for it I see is to *pinch* photos. That’s no biggie at all, something I can do a lot better with a mouse.
I wasn’t taking offense, more taking the opportunity to share my point of view.
And I agree, I don’t see much useful about multi-touch in Windows. Now the Mac features are neat, if you are into that. Then again I can do most of that stuff just as easily with a TrackPoint. Different strokes for different folks
for so many reason for so many years the trackpoint has proven to be the best solution..
i gave up touch pads when i got my first ibm thinkpad 700C so many years ago..
as for the “gee-whiz!” aspect of “squeezing” a photo or window its easier to grab a corner and resize than fumble with a less-than-perfect trouchpad (or touch screen) which does not always understand the difference between a pinching or just a thumb hovering while a finger moves..
i’ll wait for the special effects world where the work hovers all around the worker and he throws a window” around..
resizing, moving etc. while the “windows” hang in mid air..
it will be uncomfortable to work like that but gee whiz, its sure pretty..
My wife has several thinkpads by virtue of her employer, but she is not a fan of the trackpoint. She eschews the keyboard whenever possible. She’ll click thirteen menus via the mouse so she doesn’t have to hit a keyboard shortcut. But when she is forced to actually type something (ironic that she’s a programmer, so she has actually use the keyboard quite a bit), she complains that the trackpoint interferes with her typing of B, G, and H. I love her anyways.
Myself? I’m a trackpoint kind of guy. For all the reasons stated here… but mostly that I don’t have to move my hands, and that I never hit the TrackPoint accidentally and make the cursor go in the wrong spot and type half of a sentence in the wrong place doing all sorts of damage before I realize the cursor blipped on me… I get on a computer to type stuff. Commands for various forms of hardware, as well as human words to express myself. I love keyboard shortcuts, and use them anytime I can. I love the power through specialization that a keyboard provides, over other “multi-purpose” types of devices. And I’ve never, ever, not even once, hit a pointing stick on any keyboard while trying to type B, G, or H. I like the stability of the home row, and abhor things which pull me from it.
I often feel as I talk to my wife, coworkers, etc., that I am in quite the minority in loving a keyboard. People act like I’m living in the past, stuck on old technology. Everyone wants to do everything without having to type. Then again, they also laugh at the absurdity of that “The Onion” video, titled, “Apple introduces revolutionary new laptop with no keyboard”… but honestly, that’s one of the most accurate (if exagerrated) criticism I could make of Apple’s products.
For me, a pointing stick is in the true spirit of what a keyboard is supposed to be… it’s not an interruption of my typing experience, but rather, another button along with all the others. Perhaps it is a button unlike any of the others. But it’s just another part of the keyboard. Completely cohesive, exponentially efficient.
Of course, preference for touchpad versus pointing stick is about as polarized as Roe v. Wade, or chocolate vs. vanilla. People tend to love one, to the exclusion of the other, for the most part.
Me? Oh, alright, I confess, I’m a TrackPoint fan. I love the trackpoint. Best thing *ever*! I am ordering a usb trackpoint keyboard just so I can be rid of the mouse on my desktop (which I rarely use anyways, because, well, you can’t sit on your couch, or in the bathroom, or in the front yard, or in a hotel room and post nifty comments on nifty internet place very easily with a desktop, but I digress). How’s that for admiration of the TrackPoint? Would that qualify me as a TrackPoint fanboy? Dare I say a TrackPoint Stalker? Well, TrackPoint hasn’t obtained a restraining order against me yet, so it *must* be alright!
So my apologies for speaking out so gratuitously, but I couldn’t resist. Here is a haiku I’ve written, for this occaision.
Center of power
Motion sans repetition
TrackPoint is heaven
Completely off topic and I apologize, but I’m searching for someone. Are you the same Marcos Altuna that once worked at Corporate Computer in Grand Rapids, MI? If so, we worked together and I often wonder what you’re up to these days.
Hands down, it’s the TrackPoint for me. No question, no hesitation, not a second thought.
Cheers…
My daughter’s Thinkpad needed to be checkout by a computer tech support guy because she dropped it and apparently the hard drive got knocked loose. When she got it back the mouse pad was no longer usable and the red dot trackpoint was functioning. She was used to the mouse pad and would like to get it back. How do you do that?
Have your daughter try to press Fn+F8 and change the trackpoint/touchpad settings there. If that doesn’t work, I’d head over to the Lenovo forums (http://forums.lenovo.com) and see if someone can walk you through the steps of checking to make sure all the right software is installed. I’m going to bet that Fn+F8 will fix it though! It should bring up a menu where you can select from Trackpoint only, touchpad only, or Trackpoint + touchpad.