Psst! Hey Buddy! Wanna buy a mouse?

By John Kozacik

June 1995

A long time ago, Xerox Corporation's research arm came up with the idea of a pointing device as a means of passing commands into a computer, and the mouse was born as a companion to the keyboard. Since that time there have been many variations on the size and shape of this device, including turning it upside-down and calling it a track ball, but the basic idea remained pretty much the same: reach from the keyboard (or to a different place on the keyboard) and roll a part on a device or the device itself to cause a pointer on the computer screen to move. Once you got the pointer to where you wanted it on the screen, push one or a combination of buttons on the device to cause the thing on which the pointer was superimposed to do something. This addition to the way one talks to a computer has been very successful. Apple Corporation married this device with a very well designed graphical interface / operating system to earn the Mackintosh its reputation as an extremely easy to use computer. As little more than a graphical interface to the DOS operating system, Microsoft made the mouse a standard peripheral. However, now there is a way of moving a pointer around one's screen which is fundamentally different from anything else on the market. In essence, it provides one a much more sensitive means of moving the pointer than having to do so by moving one's whole arm, and it removes the necessity of having to take one's hand off the keyboard in order to reach somewhere else to operate another device. This device is IBM's new TrackPoint, and it's a wonderful development, if you define something that makes your computer easier to use and allows you to do things faster as wonderful.

Let me give you some background into how I came to this conclusion and then you can make up your own mind as to whether or not this peripheral makes sense for you. First of all I use a mouse a lot. In my work in the analysis and design of business systems I employ a graphics package to illustrate software system designs for my clients. In other endeavors I use different CAD packages, and in programming I use a variety of editors. Finally I teach a course on OS/2 professionally, which involves a lot of impromptu screen manipulations. Recently I had the need to buy a new computer system. For various reasons IBM was the brand of choice so I had the opportunity to upgrade to a TrackPoint keyboard for less than the price of an ordinary mouse. I bought this keyboard thinking it would be something I would experiment with in order to gain the experience and then not use much, reasoning that 7 or 8 years of using a mouse had built up reflexes in the way I worked that would be much too hard to change. Plus that, I recently bought a Logitech Mouseman Cordless, which is a very nice mouse. Less than one day's use of the TrackPoint prompted the title for this article. This is simply a great invention. The time savings, not to mention the convenience, of simply not having to take your hands from their normal position on the keyboard in order to move the pointer justify the cost of the thing. But there's much more benefit than that: it works better than a mouse. The device you use to move the pointer (which resembles the eraser-end of a small pencil) is perfectly positioned between and slightly below the 'G' and 'H' keys and above the 'B' key on the keyboard. It's nearly invisible when it comes to normal typing and yet its "right there" when you need it. Two 'keys' located left of center and just below the spacebar serve the 'right' and 'left' mouse button functions. They are positioned so that in a normal typing position, your left and right thumbs are directly over each of them. Thus, not only do you not have to take your hands off the keyboard to move the screen pointer, you don't even have to move them any further than you do in normal typing. The final treat is the way the pointer moves in response to pressure on the TrackPoint. A little pressure, applied with the tip of your index finger, will move the pointer on the screen exactly one pixel, very reliably and very predictably. But if you really lean on it, the pointer will streak across the screen faster than you can follow it with your eye (and this is on a 17", 1280 x 1024 display, which is 4 times the size of standard VGA). It seems that there is an infinite range between these two extremes so that getting used to moving the pointer by this means is learned very quickly. A caution here. OS/2 has a very good ballistic mouse driver which may be imparting some of this smooth behavior and ease of use. I don't work under Microsoft DOS/Windows so I don't have any experience as to how this device behaves in that environment.

I can't say enough about this device. It's easier, its faster, it makes more sense, and it's very easy to make the transition from using a mouse or trackball. I've seen other manufacturers offering this interface, mostly as part of their laptop's keyboard because it greatly simplifies this type of machine. Lexmark, IBM's keyboard/printer division, sells the this keyboard for $135, retail. For this price you get a "standard' 101-key IBM PC compatible keyboard and the TrackPoint device. The end of the keyboard's cable is bifurcated; one end is the typical PS/2-style keyboard connector and the other is the typical PS/2-style mouse connector. A real plus is that a standard PS/2 style mouse connector is located underneath the keyboard. This means that you can switch between using the TrackPoint and your mouse as you wish; i.e. both are active at the same time. This makes it very handy for people who may need to use an application that takes advantage of a three-button mouse. My opinion is that, for the TrackPoint alone, it's worth the price, but in addition you get what is arguably the keyboard with the best feel in the industry. Try spending some time with one of these next time you're at your local computer store, but be careful, it grows on you quickly and you're liable to get hooked.