Coolest mouse eliminator ever

[doc_strange]

When getting a new desktop that would no longer support my aging Alps Glidepoint, I went looking for what's out there. I found the coolest mouse-eliminator ever.

The iGesture worked out of the box with tons of functionality without a driver on Mac OS X (including Classic), on SuSe Linux 9.1, and in Win 2k. On the USB wire, it just emulates a USB mouse-ish device... but is wildly cooler, works well, and does so much more. Some fancier features came with the utilities. And it's just SMART. If a firmware update fails, it either reverts to old firmware, or goes into update mode. If THAT fails, you can tap it a certain way to put it into update mode. You can reset it at the hardware layer (doing a USB disconnect, reset, reconnect) with five presses of your palm. It's crazyeasy to use. Double-click by just touching 3 fingers; grab and drag with 3 fingers; huge drag space, and scrolling is seriously neat. It's scary intuitive (though there's a lot of funky gestures to learn). Wildly tunable.

I've always liked touchpads better than mice. I've had that Alps Glidepoint for my desktop for years. The only real drawbacks for me were that the things are usually too small, and I eventually get some impact pain from double-tapping to double-click. The Alps's buttons made that less of an issue. Still, kinda small.

I've also used a wide range of pointing devices -- touchpads, mice with 1,2,3 and even 5 buttons, trackballs, ergonomic trackballs, integrated track[ball|pad], and once I had a cool Outbound notebook with a "trackbar" on it. It came close to ideal for a laptop integrated pointing device, by the way.

But the iGuesture takes the prize. They have other really way-out products (keyboard that doubles as a 100% touchpad surface and iGesture pad).

Comments

[vokzal.livejournal.com]

Ha, I bet I could program that to actually be able to frag! Or at least move...

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

? 'splain?

[vokzal.livejournal.com]

In ego-shooters, ever since moving and shooting were split commands, I can do either one or the other. Today's input devices just aren't made to make sense! Or at least, /I/ don't find it intuitive. Not enough to pick it up after a few rounds. Since I don't have all day to play Doom, I usually only touch the stuff over Christmas!

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

Ah! Yes. Actually, I think there is a "game mode" the pad can be put in, which lets you steer and shoot at the same time and turns some of the shortcuts into motions relevant to first-person shooters. Pretty cool they were thinking of the intense gaming community, too.

[ex-desertson422.livejournal.com]

Wow. How long did it take you to learn the commands and make it as intuitive as mice are for people now? It looks pretty nifty.

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

The basics were immediately learnable (move, click, double-click, grab, scroll). I've added onto my repetoire whenever I think it would be cool if I could [do x]. Usually, they already had a way to [do x]. Comes with a handy quick-reference card.

[cheesetruck.livejournal.com]

I swear, I posted the full keyboard version of that last year (:

You pondered it (:

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

You may be right!

Around that time (a year ago) I had 3 or 4 people send me the keyboard info with a "cool, but I would miss the keys" kind of take on it. When I saw the pad, I thought it was neat, but confusing. Turned out, it's not at all confusing.