HACKER Q&A
📣 gala8y

Suggestions for Additional Touchpad


I need to start using mouse less. I had a broken right wrist in childhood and using mouse a lot gives me some RSI symptoms recently. I am trying to be more keyboard oriented (using Vimium in browser for example), but I still need to move pointer around. I have a laptop with Mint, but I always use external, mechanical keyboard and a G502 Logitech mouse and external monitors. A friend of mine, using laptop for dev, suggested that additional touchpad could be a solution. What touchpad would you suggest, do you use a similar setup (ext. keyboard, ext. monitors, additional touchpad)?


  👤 ofalkaed Accepted Answer ✓
I also have occasional wrist issues from a long ago broken wrist, touch pads don't help a great deal, better than a mouse but not great. I find a trackball to be much better, I like the Kensington Expert, as long as I use the wrist support which comes with it I never have any wrist issues. The Thinkpad trackpoint is also quite good but if you are set on a mechanical keyboard I am not sure that will work for you, I doubt any of the keyboards with trackpoints are mechanical.

👤 brudgers
I use the touchpad on my laptop and put the laptop in my lap and my ass in a comfy chair.

Haven't had hand/wrist pain in more than three years.

Back when I used mice and keyboards on desks, a big source of pain was small radius and/or sharp corners on the edge of the work surface. So I used work surfaces with large radius edges.

Obviously, the laptop in my lap made that moot.

It's not that I don't like mechanical keyboards and mice.

For me, their pleasures aren't worth the pain.

YMMV.

Good luck.