Wired Trackballs For Me.

I am always looking for ways to upgrade my game play.  Not necessarily to play better so to speak but to play more comfortably.

I would love the get something like a Razer Naga but I can not play with a laser mouse and quite honestly I can not see how anyone could play with one.  They are, at least for me, inefficient.  Flying alone becomes an adventure where I would need to take sea sickness pills to be able to handle it.  You go flying up and down at a tiny twitch in your hand.  I just want to fly straight. 

With a standard trackball mouse I maintain full control of all movements and can go up or down as I please and not at the whim of a possible twitch of my hand.

I tried using a laser mouse once for healing figuring I can use my keyboard for movement instead.  I thought that being my biggest issue with a laser mouse was movement so if I was not moving with my mouse then I would be fine.  It did not work well at all.  It just felt uncomfortable.  I tried adjusting sensitivity on the mouse but I could never get it to the way I wanted it.

With a track ball I can cover all the raid frames for healing and my mouse overs with just the slightest of movement of my thumb.  I was never left to scramble to move my mouse because everything was within a thumbs movement as opposed to having to slide the damn mouse all over the place to get to the frame I needed to cast a heal on.

I attempted to give it a little bit of a try but it was not going to work for me.  I'm a old dog and I can't be taught new tricks.  Trackball mice are just 110 times better for movement than any laser mouse could ever be and I've gotten so used to the minimum movement needed to do the maximum amount of things that I can't get into the sliding a mouse all over the place again.  That approach just seems so last century to me.

The biggest problem for me is the fact that there are not many trackball mice out there to begin with.  This means there are none with extra buttons.  This kills me.  I want some extra buttons on my mouse but I can not find a mouse that has them that is also a trackball mouse.

I found this trackball mouse a few months back and I almost started to drool.  It has two extra buttons.  A whole two extra.  I already knew what I would be binding to them.  Shift and Control.  Alt and space seem to fit easy into my normal keystrokes but shift and control always seemed to be a little odd and limited my use of my full keyboard.

Sure, I would want a lot of buttons like the naga has but being I will not use a laser mouse I am stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Get more utility and lose ease of mobility or keep my mobility and rely on my keyboard for everything else.  With this I could rely on my keyboard a little easier with two modifiers on my mouse.  Oh the joy filled the air in my grumpy world when I saw they finally released a trackball with some buttons.

Until I got it that is.  Oh hell.  In my excitement to see that there was a new trackball in the world I neglected to notice that it was wireless.

I hate wireless.  Again, it is a performance issue.  Wireless can lag.  Wired can not.  Lag is not good which means wireless is not good.  When I do something I want it done now.  Not even 0.1 second after I do it.  Now.  Anything less then now is a failure.

I decided I would give it a try anyway.  I know a lot of people that use wireless and do just fine.  I tried it for all of 3 seconds before I screamed this is not going to work.

No no, it was not a performance issue.  It was a sound issues.  The feedback through my headphones made me nearly deaf the second I plugged the damn thing in.

Another reason wireless sucks.  Lots of feedback issues when playing with wireless.

So I plugged my old one back in and went merrily on my way.

One day I might try to start over so to speak and learn to deal with the horrible movement that a laser mouse offers.  Perhaps as I get more used to it I can almost catch up to the ability the trackball offered. 

The biggest thing for me is the movement in life and not in game.  I put my mouse somewhere and it never moves.  Never needs to.  With a laser mouse I will have to start acting like a spastic monkey moving the mouse all over the place to do things that could be done easier and without movement with a trackball.  I'm not exactly sure why people think more movement and less accuracy means better. 

Maybe they just had as much practice with a laser mouse as I did with a trackball.  So they are an expert at laser just as much as I am an expert with trackball.  Perhaps given enough time I could get as good with the laser as I am with my trackball and if that is indeed the case it might be well worth it to try.  I want all those buttons for my game play.  I can imagine how many things it would make so much easier on me in game.

All I want are the buttons.  Why can't they make a trackball with buttons?  Why can't they make a trackball with even just those two buttons that is wired?

Someone once told me that there was a place you can have a mouse custom made.  Would any of you happen to know where that might be?

I have over 3,000 dollars worth of mice in my draw right now.  All going to waste, all purchased with the desire to try to use them, all given up on in time.  Some faster then others.

For now I've decided to try and work on the feedback from my wireless trackball and ordered a few ferrite beads in an effort to see if it will limit or remove (hopefully) the feedback I got while trying to use the wireless trackball I got a few months back.

In truth, just those two buttons would be enough for me, for now at least, to make things easier.  I hope it works.

I might have to give in and take the time to teach this old dog some new tricks however.  If I ever want a mouse with a reasonable amount of buttons I will have to go the way of using a laser mouse.

I wonder what it is with society that makes laser so popular when trackball is better.  Then again, we are the same society that made VHS the dominate format back when BETA and VHS where both out.  BETA was much better in every way and we decided to go with the lesser quality VHS. 

The human race.  Give them two choices and they will always choose the worst of the two.  Proven over and over again.