Logitech Trackman Wheel Optical (Silver)
by Logitech
|
Our Price: $343.76 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $69.99 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
|---|
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Logitech Trackman Wheel Optical (Silver)
Customer Review: Better than a mouse!
Summary: 5 Stars
I see that I'm hardly unique here. Like others who've posted reviews already, I bought my Logitech Trackman Marble back in 1995 or so when I bought my first Windows PC.
So when I went GUI, like many of you, it seemed to me like a totally dumb idea to move a mouse around a desktop. It made much more sense to me to keep your hand on a stationary peripheral.
At the time, the Logitech Trackman Marble was the only game in town if you wanted a trackball. This simple inexpensive little peripheral has outlived countless computers and has served me well for over ten years! Wow!
So I was beside myself when some books on the shelf above my computer slipped and knocked a cup of Pepsi over my keyboard and Trackman last week. The keyboard? Eh! Keyboards are the proverbial dime a dozen these days. Big whoop. But my Trackman! I was frozen in terror. Do they still make trackballs? Or have mice totally won over? Or are they all ambidextrous now with the ball in the middle to appease lefties? I'm so used to using my thumb to roll the ball that I don't think I could get used to an ambidextrous trackball (and contrary to what others have said, I'm so comfortable using this type of trackball that I can frag in Unreal with the best of 'em using my thumb to aim with)!
Amazon.com to the rescue! Much to my relief, Logitech still sells a Trackman trackball. The styling is a little more modern and "swoopy," but the design is essentially unchanged in 10+ years--and that's a GOOD thing! I ordered it from Amazon last week and find it fits me as well as my prior Trackman Marble. The Trackman Wheel is a wee bit smaller than the Marble and the mouse buttons are a little closer together--not enough to see, but my hand feels the difference. But that's no big deal, I got used to it after just a few minutes. Also, it comes with a driver CD, but Windows recognized it out of the box without having to install the CD--even the wheel. That's a good thing too because I don't like installing unnecessary software onto my PC if I don't have to. I can't praise Logitech enough! Highly recommended for anyone addicted to a thumb type trackball!
Incidentally, after my new Trackman arrived and I breathed a sigh of relief that it is essentially the same design, I performed a little "surgery" on my dead Trackman. Removing the four little screws from underneath it, I disassembled it. Before you read on, don't try this on any working device--this was a shot in the dark on a device that I had given up for dead anyway. With the ball out and the screws removed, the shell pops apart easily and the tiny circuit board lifts right out--no prying necessary or risking snapping little prongs off to lift it out. Being careful not to break any of the delicate wire jumpers, I wiped the circuit board down with a damp cloth to get all the Pepsi gunk off. Then after it dried, I wiped it down again with a Q-tip dipped in rubbing alcohol to remove any residual moisture. The top and bottom plastic shell, as well as the ball, I ran under the hot water faucet for a few minutes (there's no metal parts). Letting it all dry out overnight (the slightest moisture on any electronic circuit will totally fry it upon giving it power), I reassembled it the next morning. Guess what? I plugged it back into the USB port, and it works perfectly! Better, actually, than it had worked for a long time. Being optical, the Trackman Marble never lost its precision over the years the way ordinary mice do after a year or so, but I was never really able to clean those little metal prongs in the ball socket very well, and the ball sometimes felt "sticky" even after cleaning the ball socket out. Picking the gunk off those little metal prongs in the ball socket with my fingernails never got it as clean as the "overhaul" it just received. So now I have two working Trackmans, both seemingly in brand new condition!
So I'm going to go back to using my old Trackman Marble and put the new Trackman back in its box and save it for when my old one does eventually wear out.
Customer Review: Comfortable alternative to a mouse
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought a trackball to give myself a more space-efficient alternative to a mouse. After deciding against most of Kensington's trackballs because of cost and against a Microsft trackball because of my smaller hand size, I settled on the Logitech Trackman.
I had never used a trackball for even a short amount of time, so adjusting to the feel of the Trackman took several days but was definitely worth it.
-Ball movement. The ball glides smoothly on several mini ball bearings and is a comfortable size for me to operate with my thumb. Plus, it is also optical and thus has less parts to clean.
-Familiar mouse-like shape. The Logitech Trackman is more mouse-shaped than many trackballs, and the buttons/scroll wheel can be used with the usual fingers. Unlike a mouse, of course, you don't have to worry much about desktop space and don't need to move the entire device around.
-Simple buttons. If you don't like mice/trackballs that are loaded with buttons, this is for you. This trackball only has the standard left/right buttons, plus a clickable scroll wheel. The main buttons aren't too stiff, and the wheel moves easily and has a muted click when you scroll (pretty much the same as a Logitech optical mouse).
-Curves. The entire device is curved to fit the right hand. There are grooves on the two "mouse" buttons to give your fingers a place to rest, and there are additional grooves for your ring and little fingers to rest on. There's also a bit of rubber along the right edge, presumably for comfort reasons.
-Size. One of the reasons I've bought Logitech mice instead of the equivalent Microsoft products is that the MS mice feel large, chunky and unwieldy in my hand. This trackball is no exception; my palm, thumb, and fingers rest exactly where they should be. If you like the size of Logitech's optical scroll mice, you will probably like this trackball as well; if you have larger hands or generally prefer the larger size of Microsoft's mice, it would be a good idea to try this out in a store before buying.
-Long cord. If your only free USB ports are several feet away, under a desk, etc., hooking the Trackman up shouldn't be a problem. It's a bit more cumbersome if you have it plugged directly into your keyboard and have lots of extra cord left over, but it's nothing a simple twist tie can't fix.
-Construction. The Trackman is available for less than $30, but it has the usual Logitech quality. Three rubber feet keep the Trackman from slipping around. The bottom is held together with four screws and can easily be opened using a Philips head screwdriver if necessary; the ball can be popped out from above by grabbing it between your thumb/forefinger and giving it a good tug. All in all, much easier to open up and clean than, for instance, an Apple peripheral, but at the same time it won't come apart by accident during regular use.
-OS X compatibility. The two mouse buttons and scroll wheel work fine without any Logitech drivers installed, though the trackball is a bit slow. Installing the Logitech Control Center allows you to bump the tracking speed up further and program the middle (scroll wheel) button, among other things. If you already have installed it (for use with a Logitech keyboard or mouse, for example), the Control Center should detect the Trackman and allow you to program it without installing any trackball-specific software (you can even leave your mouse connected without any real problems).
**If you use OS 10.3, download the latest drivers! Earlier Logitech drivers (such as the one included in the box) caused several kernel panics on my Mac when used under recent versions of OS 10.3.**
Customer Review: The Best Mouse Killer Out There
Summary: 5 Stars
Computer interfaces, like recreational drugs, have to keep on getting more and more immediately satisfying no matter what they do to your body. The most dreadful change was from the "white on black" scheme of old terminals to today's "black on white" screens--vastly increasing the amount of light coming from the screen and hence our inability to turn away from it. The second was the use of "pointing devices" which has led to the development of a generation of people who have such asymmetry in their hands that they look like lobsters.
The conventional mouse was crafted through great engineering and marketing research to be compelling and hard to let go of, even though it leads your ligaments to freeze in a terrible position. The logitech handed trackball (I can't recommend the more symmetric types) is the only pointing device that works with the construction of the hand of most members of homo sapiens. The only part that is moving repetitively is the base of the thumb which is one of the stronger parts of the hand.
You will notice this if you try this trackball under normal circumstances. But it is in tense circumstances that it comes into its own. Grip a normal mouse the way you would if you were upset--say, you were just clicking open an email that you correctly guessed told you that you were fired. Your hand is almost certainly twisted into a grip that will make you a natural Appalachian banjo player, but useless for pretty much everything else. Now do the same thing with the trackman. It actually relaxes your hand as you grab harder! Thankfully, most of us don't get fired regularly, but we do have stress and lots of the stress comes precisely when we are using our pointing device--opening and selecting things. Those of us with stressful jobs and trackmen will be beating all the other folks in the old age home at tiddlywinks, I can tell you that.
Further--and this is a bit disgusting but true--mice get dirty from hand sweat, and the more tension in your life, the more hand sweat. For some reason computer manufacturers went for this dental-equipment beige color that really shows the dirt. I sit down at someone's computer who has the original mouse and I don't want to touch it. I'd rather wear their dirty underwear. At least I can't see the grossness. The scum that does build up over the years on the trackball is easy to remove--just pop out the ball (the newer versions don't have the retaining ring so just give the unit a smart tap upside down and out it comes like a glass eye!).
Finally, and maybe this is just me, but sometimes if you've been working late, the typical mouse DOES start to look like a real mouse. Or a rat, since (thank G-d) there aren't many mice that big. Like most of us, I've killed my share of mice and don't really like the idea of having to reach over and put my hand on their big brother.
The trackman, in contrast, looks a little bit like the face of a beluga whale seen from the side. That's calming! And if you're like me, when you're using a computer, you can use all the calm you can get. [39]
Customer Review: It's very good, but I still prefer my Trackman Marble it replaced
Summary: 5 Stars
After approximately 10 years, my treasured, trusty Logitech Trackman Marble was on its last legs. :( Unfortunately, it's no longer being produced; I looked around online and found a new one being sold by an individual for $200. Um...I love it, but not THAT much! And I didn't want a used one, which could be had for $75-ish. So I gritted my teeth and bought the most similar trackball Logitech now offers, the Trackman Wheel.
Using it the first few days was pretty difficult, as I was still used to the VERY comfortable, VERY familiar, and VERY ergonomically correct [for my hand, anyway] design of the Trackman Marble. I kept finding myself wanting to plug it back in...
After a few days it got better. It's been about 3 weeks now and I'm used to it, but still prefer the old one. I think for someone who never used the Marble and, therefore, isn't familiar with its extremely comfortable design, the Wheel's design is probably perfectly acceptable. (The differences I see: The Trackman Wheel is more compact than the Marble, so the hand can't be naturally spread out as much, the buttons aren't as long so the fingers can't lie in a naturally stretched position, it's higher which means the wrist is less relaxed.)
I don't want to make it sound bad because it's not! I'm just extremely partial to my old Trackman Marble--and wish they'd resume production!
At first glance it appeared that there'd been an inexplicably idiotic change. On the old one there was a removable ring around the ball which you could pop off, remove the ball, clean the contacts, blow out any loose dust, wipe the ball, and put it back together. On the new version there is no ring, and I saw no apparent way to get the ball out; I'd read elsewhere that you had to use a screwdriver to remove the bottom of the trackball just to clean it. But, alas, that's incorrect! Flip it over and you'll see a small hole beneath the ball--just get something like a pen, screwdriver, or key and use it to push through the hole and pop the ball out.
Finally, being a Linux-only person, I was glad to see that as with EVERY Logitech product I've ever purchased, the Trackman Wheel worked straight out of the box; it's on my HP dv6000 laptop running Ubuntu 9.04 with KDE 4.2. I plugged it in, it was correctly identified and configured, and that was that. No need to even OPEN the packet of software that came with it...which, of course, is meant for windoze. I find it ironic that Logitech consistently puts out great products that work beautifully with Linux, yet continue pretending Linux doesn't exist.
UPDATE: I've since bought another one of these for a different computer. I now find them very comfortable and easy to use. Also, they're now on Kubuntu 9.10 boxes and, as before, they were detected and configured with no effort on my part.
Customer Review: Say goodbye to wrist cramps.
Summary: 5 Stars
I have had this product for well over a year now. I am a heavy computer user and using a mouse was just putting a huge strain on my wrist, so I decided that maybe I should look into mouse alternatives.Well, my first choice was the Kensington Orbit trackball, based on reviews on this site. All-in-all, it is a great product, but it has 1 tragic flaw which killed it for me - it gunks up incredibly quickly; I am talking on the order of every hour or two. I returned it to the store from whence it was purchased (hint: the one with a big yellow tag). Strike one.
My next choice was what is essentially a corded version of the Logitech Cordless Trackman FX Optical Trackball, which was probably simply called the same thing, minus the "Cordless". The up side - it has several buttons; this device did nothing about my wrist cramp problem, however. Strike two. (Side note: I don't really see the point of getting a cordless trackball or keyboard, unless you are just dying to have more battery-powered things.)
Choice number three: the Logitech Marble Mouse (which is a trackball, despite its name). I just plain could not get used to the feel of it and it did very little to ease strain anyhow. A lot of people on this site have good things to say about it. I, however, do not. Guess the third time is not always a charm.
Well, I finally ended up with (you guessed it) the Logitech Trackman Wheel Optical. While it takes some getting used to, once you get a feel for this, you will never even want to go near another mouse. It has two buttons and the scroll wheel which also doubles as a third button when pressed in, although I never find myself in need of this third "button" myself. This is probably the most ergonomic pointing device you can hope to get...that is, assuming you are right-handed. Sorry, lefties, looks like your choices are considerably more limited when it comes to trackballs.
While being an optical device, the ball bearings upon which the trackball itself rests do tend to need cleaned off once or twice a day, but this only takes a few seconds and is not nearly as time-consuming as cleaning off the roll bars on the non-optical Kensington Orbit, and these cleanings aren't nearly as frequent, either. I don't think you are going to be able to buy a trackball that doesn't need cleaned fairly often, and this one does a nice job of making it a relatively painless affair.
The software allows you to set the directional orientation (which way is "up"), among other things, though I have not even bothered installing the software since I started using Windows XP.
Bottom line: If you are right-handed and have your own computer, buy this. Just make sure you give yourself a day or so to adjust to using it. You shan't be dissapointed.