Kensington Expert Mouse

Kensington Expert Mouse on my desk at work.

Yesterday while at CompUSA to see if there were any interesting / good prices on items I wanted (as part of their 50% – 70% off everything going-out-of-business sale) I came across a Kensington Expert Mouse for US$50. I’ve been wanting to try one of these for a few years now, but it’s high $100 price put me off. Well, at that price I couldn’t pass it up, so I purchased one.

That said, I’m not sure I like it. I think it’s the tilted-back position it naturally rests in, and maybe a combination of the sensitivity I need to set it at in order to feel natural, but after an hour or so of use the back of my hand begins to ache.

Also, installation of its drivers appears to have somehow disabled the Alp touchpad driver for my laptop. Part of this driver compensates for unintended brushes of the touchpad, so they aren’t turned into inadvertent mouse clicks. The software also allows one to assign the buttons to send combinations of keyboard presses, but I can’t seem to make it send things like Windows-D (Show Desktop) on Windows XP, or any of the Dashboard or Expose keys on OS X.

Beyond the thing mentioned above (which may be resolvable with some repositioning, acceleration adjustment, and noodling with drivers / software, I’ve taken to it pretty quickly. It doesn’t seem to work so well when doing PCB CAD.

I think that after a few days of trying it I’ll decide if I’m going to keep it or not. As these regularly sell on eBay for prices around (if not higher than) what I paid for it, selling it will just be a hassle and a financial wash. No money lost, really.

Now, to try and fix the Alps driver problem. That’ll be a real big issue for me if I can’t get it working, as my hands regularly pass right over the touchpad whenever I’m typing.

UPDATE: Reinstalling the Alps driver and rebooting has restored it’s functionality. Judicious playing with the acceleration profiles for both slow and fast movement of the trackball has helped make it easier to position things. Now, to give it a day or so of use.