> the cumbersome migration of the hand between keyboard and mouse
This is one of the reasons I love the TrackPoint and use it exclusively. There is no physical context switching between mouse and keyboard. If you are a touch typist, it is always right there on the home row.
I am such a TrackPoint nut that on the rare occasions when I've had to work on a computer that is not a ThinkPad (a desktop or a different laptop), I use a ThinkPad wireless keyboard to give it a TrackPoint:
One job I had issued Dell laptops, and I found that I could put the ThinkPad keyboard right on top of the laptop keyboard. It even left the Dell's touchpad accessible. I do use two-finger touchpad scrolling once in a while.
Something I don't like about modern ThinkPad keyboards is that they took away the Menu key and replaced it with a PrtSc (screenshot) key. The Menu key is such a nice way to bring up a context menu based on the current keyboard cursor location (rather than the mouse position). These AutoHotkey rules fix that:
; Remap the PrtSc key:
; PrtSc -> Menu (like an old ThinkPad keyboard)
; Windows+PrtSc -> Screenshot of all monitors
; Windows+Alt+PrtSc -> Screenshot of current window
PrintScreen:: AppsKey
#PrintScreen:: PrintScreen
#!PrintScreen:: Send {Alt Down}{PrintScreen}{Alt Up}
This is for Windows, of course. I imagine there must be a way to do something similar on Linux.
Another tip for Windows users: if you have a keyboard with a numeric pad that you don't use much, enable MouseKeys in the Windows accessibility settings. This lets you use the numpad as a "keyboard mouse" for precise mouse movement. Or if you have a ThinkPad keyboard, try my JKLmouse program (another AutoHotkey script) which gives you MouseKeys-style mouse control using the IJKL or HJKL keys (and neighboring keys for diagonal movement). It will work on other laptop keyboards too, but you really want physical mouse buttons like a ThinkPad for it to be useful.
This is one of the reasons I love the TrackPoint and use it exclusively. There is no physical context switching between mouse and keyboard. If you are a touch typist, it is always right there on the home row.
I am such a TrackPoint nut that on the rare occasions when I've had to work on a computer that is not a ThinkPad (a desktop or a different laptop), I use a ThinkPad wireless keyboard to give it a TrackPoint:
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/accessories-and-software/keyb...
One job I had issued Dell laptops, and I found that I could put the ThinkPad keyboard right on top of the laptop keyboard. It even left the Dell's touchpad accessible. I do use two-finger touchpad scrolling once in a while.
Something I don't like about modern ThinkPad keyboards is that they took away the Menu key and replaced it with a PrtSc (screenshot) key. The Menu key is such a nice way to bring up a context menu based on the current keyboard cursor location (rather than the mouse position). These AutoHotkey rules fix that:
This is for Windows, of course. I imagine there must be a way to do something similar on Linux.Another tip for Windows users: if you have a keyboard with a numeric pad that you don't use much, enable MouseKeys in the Windows accessibility settings. This lets you use the numpad as a "keyboard mouse" for precise mouse movement. Or if you have a ThinkPad keyboard, try my JKLmouse program (another AutoHotkey script) which gives you MouseKeys-style mouse control using the IJKL or HJKL keys (and neighboring keys for diagonal movement). It will work on other laptop keyboards too, but you really want physical mouse buttons like a ThinkPad for it to be useful.
https://www.jklmouse.com/
(There is an installer, but I recommend downloading AutoHotkey and the jklmouse.ahk script from GitHub for the most flexibility.)