Trackballs Only For Me
I’ve only used trackball mice for years. For probably the past ten or so years I’ve been using the Kensington Orbit:
I was on my third one and decided I’d try a different model this time. Even though trackball mice are pitched as ergonomic, I’ve found some hand fatigue on the Orbit, my middle fingers in particular. As I spend way too much time on my computer, I even swapped to using my left hand for mouse duties a couple of years back (which did help). So I thought I’d try a different style of trackball this time.
Generally trackballs either have the ball on the top or on the side. I thought I’d give the Nulea M501 a go as this one has the ball under the left thumb, which I haven’t used since this one:
The Nulea M501
I paid £30 for this on Amazon (a couple of days ago), nearly half the price of a Kensington Orbit. Build quality seems good and the rubber feet do the job of keeping the thing from moving around nicely. You’ve got three connection modes: two bluetooth and one usb (with included adapter). As I only change a mouse if I need to, it took me a while to realise that I couldn’t use it through the USB cable (that’s for charging only I think)! Once I’d figured out I needed to plug the adapter into my PC, everything worked. I should note I’m using Linux Mint 22 as my OS, and it worked with no fiddling whatsover (usually the case these days).
Now it takes quite a while to get used to a trackball mouse when the position of the ball moves. As I wrote before, I’ve been using a top mounted ball for years and this one is on the side. So it feels weird. I think the best thing for me to do is update this post in a few weeks, once I’ve got used to it.
Overall though at the moment, I think I’ll be happy with this Nulea trackball.
Updates
Once I’ve got used to this mouse, I’ll update this post below with more information
