timwhit said:
Why do the god damn peripheral makers always have to stop making the simple good products and introduce mice that have 11 buttons and keyboards that have countless useless features?
Well, sorry to say, but one of my coworkers explained it to me. "It's just to annoy *you*." I'm sorry I'm so much fun to annoy; believe me, it annoys me at *least* as much as it does you. Thank goodness I have unusual tastes, or more people would be put out by this.
Currently, I'm using a USB wireless trackball with 10 buttons plus a wheel (which is, of course, also a button), which I got simply for the USB functionality; I'd have much preferred a simple USB version of Kensington's four button 'Expert Mouse' trackball, but they didn't have that. As the cost was, in fact, the same, I decided to get this thing anyway. So far, I've really used, well, three buttons. Oh, btw, I only got the 'Expert Mouse' because I was looking for a trackball of approximately that size, with a center-mounted ball, and at least three buttons, as I'm a unix geek.
As far as extra keys, I use a Kinesis keyboard whenever possible, so typical computer users have 16 more keys than I have. Admittedly, I did get the programmable version.
Like Merc, I'm a lefty that uses the "mouse" right-handed, although I personally can't fathom how most right-handed programmers manage using the mouse right-handed. I can only guess that's a lot of what's behind the push to move to point-n-click programming. Otherwise, I can't imagine any real programmer actually working on such a language.