The inevitable finally happened tonight, about 15 minutes ago I managed to kill my Kensington WebRacer touchpad pointing device (kinda like a mouse, but much cooler). Unforunately I can no longer find decent touchpads anywhere, so thus I am doomed to find a replacement that isn’t a touchpad. Up until a few days ago I was still thinking of rejoining the rest of the world with their regular mice, but I am now rethinking that… I just looked on Amazon with a hope in my heart that I would find just one Kensington WebRacer availible, but no luck, however, a very nice subsitute did cross my path. A Kensington Trackball! At this moment I am giving it very real consideration as it is a very nice piece of hardware that meets my reasons for not wanting a “typical” mouse. I am giving the brand itself a lot of consideration because of the duration that the WebRacer had lasted, almost 5 years. The WebRacer’s “dieing issue” is the primary left button, which refuses to click. The redundant nature of the WebRacer eliminates the need for an IMMEDIATE replacement, but it does certainly put pressure on me to prepare to move on, especially since I had the spare left button, it requires my thumb to bend (yes people, I use my thumb to left click and pinky to right click while using the index to move the cursor).
I have been accused of being a packrat when it comes to my hardware, with the way I feel at this moment I understand why I am. While the thought of removing the WebRacer from active duty doesn’t cause me any pain, I can barely stand the thought of throwing it out, it has been with me through so many things over the years, sort of like an old friend.
The end of my computing era with the desktop touchpad is upon me, I shall now move on… or try to at least.