The Tex Yoda II Mechanical Keyboard Is For Trackball Lovers

[scolaner]

Not to sound like an ad slogan, but if you liked the iconic IBM/Lenovo laptop trackball-and-touchpad combo, you’ll love the Yoda II mechanical keyboard.

The Tex Yoda II Mechanical Keyboard Is For Trackball Lovers : Read more

 

[DarkSable]

Actually, this could be super nice for productivity tasks; being able to type a lot and still move the cursor without having to keep the keyboard off-center is pretty sweet.

 

[knowom]

I'm not feeling it what trackball lovers need is twin left/right wireless preferably programmable game keypads w/thumb trackballs. I'd have programmable rows of keys a bit offset sort of like home,page up, (7, and 5) number keypad keys are orientated.

I'd have probably 3 rows and use those half height logitech g-keys/F1-F12 keys for it. Better reach with less strain and fatigue while maintaining proper thumb trackball positioning.

All of that said all of that outside of typing that's all a trackball user could really want in a ideal setup. They would want a nice quality trackball as well the ones on the market today feel so dated compared to the mouse tech guts inside them from even 10 years ago.

 

[tonicipriani]

That's not a "trackball", it's a pointing stick or "TrackPoint".

 

[cryoburner]

Does Tom's Hardware not know what a trackball is?

Trackball: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackball

Not a trackball: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick

Perhaps you were thinking of "TrackPoint".

Edit: And I was beat to it. : P

 

[vijer]

Glad to see someone else pointed out that it isn't a trackball - what kind of journalism are you practicing when you don't even use the correct terminology? A little googling would have gotten you the correct vocabulary.

I'm using a pointing stick at the moment - best thing ever invented for laptops - touch pads are horrible things.

 

[eddt]

This is totally a trackpoint keyboard I could get behind! Hope they get them to market soon!

 

[bobknob]

Not a trackball!!

 

[LostAlone]

Actually, this could be super nice for productivity tasks; being able to type a lot and still move the cursor without having to keep the keyboard off-center is pretty sweet.

Nah, it's throwing out the productivity baby with the bathwater. It's asking you to use a non-ideal mouse-thing that will absolutely certainly be slower than using a regular mouse to try and save a third of a second moving from mouse to keyboard. You'll get the best productivity by having the best device for two very different, very specific tasks.

Whatever you lose shifting from one to the other, you gain from having a proper scroll wheel (for example), sensitivity that perfectly suits your tastes and a potential bevy of extra buttons to use. For cursor movement you have arrow keys and the page up, page down, home, end combo to work with. You can get around a document well enough even just using the keyboard. It's notable that people with totally reconfigurable macro-bereft keyboards still typically don't set them up so they can keep their fingers on the home row.

The real bottle neck in productivity isn't how much you can physically type, or how quickly you can dance around the document, it's having sensible things to write when you get there. Absolutely no-one just sits at their keyboard and types at 100wpm end to end, bemoaning the fact they had to slow down to open a new document.

 

[DarkSable]

Actually, this could be super nice for productivity tasks; being able to type a lot and still move the cursor without having to keep the keyboard off-center is pretty sweet.

Nah, it's throwing out the productivity baby with the bathwater. It's asking you to use a non-ideal mouse-thing that will absolutely certainly be slower than using a regular mouse to try and save a third of a second moving from mouse to keyboard. You'll get the best productivity by having the best device for two very different, very specific tasks.

Whatever you lose shifting from one to the other, you gain from having a proper scroll wheel (for example), sensitivity that perfectly suits your tastes and a potential bevy of extra buttons to use. For cursor movement you have arrow keys and the page up, page down, home, end combo to work with. You can get around a document well enough even just using the keyboard. It's notable that people with totally reconfigurable macro-bereft keyboards still typically don't set them up so they can keep their fingers on the home row.

The real bottle neck in productivity isn't how much you can physically type, or how quickly you can dance around the document, it's having sensible things to write when you get there. Absolutely no-one just sits at their keyboard and types at 100wpm end to end, bemoaning the fact they had to slow down to open a new document.

I'm sorry, I should have been more clear.

I wasn't in any way suggesting that this would be faster - clearly we're using the venerable keyboard/mouse combination for a reason.

My thinking was that this would let you keep the keyboard centered, so that your shoulders aren't shifted as you're typing, meaning that even though productivity would be down, productivity-focused tasks, particularly those where you're using they keyboard heavily but also moving the cursor with the mouse, would cause less pain and discomfort.