New CAD Toy

After about a decade of faithful daily all-day service, one of the switches in my trusty trackball Kensington Slimblade has started sticking, so it was dragging more than it was selecting. I could just reassign that button, but it’s been a decade after all – well, 8 years. That’s pretty good for a plastic peripheral. So it’s time to move on. So long old friend.

But it turns out I’m not moving far from home. I got the Kensington Expert Mouse. It’s about the same size as the Slimblade, but it has a wrist pad and a scrolling ring around the ball. Oh, and the ball is sparkly dark blue. It has the same 4 buttons and runs on a wire.

There is this perception that trackballs are less accurate than optical mice. After 10, I mean 8 years, I don’t think that’s true, at least not of the Kensington trackballs. These devices have giant balls. If you get a Logitech or a Microsoft, they are more like “marbles”, the Kensington trackball is 2″ diameter.

Also the Expert has 4 programmable keys, and 2 programmable combinations. So all 4 keys, and then top 2 keys combined, and bottom 2 keys combined, so 6 programmable strokes. And of course it’s ambidextrous/ symmetrical, and you can swap left and right mouse button functions in the customization.

The one thing I liked about the Slimblade over the Expert is that the socket for the ball in the Slimblade is an open hole, so debris caught on the ball can just fall straight out onto the desk. On the Expert, it’s a closed back, so it would seem to trap everything.

The other big difference with the Expert is the scrolling ring around the ball. On the Slimblade, you use the ball itself, rotating on a vertical axis to do the scrolling. This seems weird at first, but it’s pretty slick, although I will admit that it stops working frequently, and requires a driver restart to get scrolling back. The ring is pretty slick, though, and so far, I’m liking it.

And the Expert is less expensive than the Slimblade. I think it was $69, which is pretty reasonable for something you use all day every day for a bunch of years. Who doesn’t appreciate value and longevity?

The design isn’t exactly new, however. I guess you can take this as a positive or a negative. You can see the images from 8 years ago are the same as the current device, for both products. In a way this is refreshing. The function of the mouse hasn’t changed in 30 years, so it make sense that the design is kind of static. Kensington is a pretty no-nonsense company. (Certainly not like 3Dconnexion/Logitech which obsoleted the older and perfectly functional Space Pilot just so they could sell you a new device – I mean, it just zooms/pans/rotates the screen, what actual function could have possibly warranted obsoleting it???) Ok, so I’m a little bitter about my Space Pilot being obsoleted. Perfectly useful, attractive controller sitting in the drawer, waiting for me to get nostalgic for Windows 7 and SolidWorks 2018.

Maybe I could hack the Kensington device to work like a spaceball?!?! It already has a big ball. Hmmm. If anyone has figured that out, please let me know. I love my spaceball, but I despise companies that trash perfectly good legacy products. ***Edit: The scroll ring zooms view. Hold down upper left button and ball rotates view. You can program a key to a keyboard letter for a specific application, such as F for Zoom To Fit in SolidWorks.****

Anyway, Kensington Expert mouse. Pretty cool. Let’s hope for another 10 – ok, 8 – years. Hey, my Logitech keyboard is starting to drop “m”s. Kensington makes keyboards too!