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.

Love live the TrackPoint.

Learn more about TrackPoints at Wikipedia and shout out your TrackPoint love in the comments!

P.S. Gizmodo readers agree with me