I hate touchpads. I use an external mouse with my Macbook. I have a Dell D830 with the nub pointer and it was so much easier to use, especially considering that you don't have to remove your hands from the keyboard and your finger doesn't need to cross 3 inches of space to move across the screen.

I've always been confused by this argument. I can reach my trackpad with my right thumb without moving any of my other fingers off of the home row. Is this an unusual amount of flexibility?

Maybe. I have long fingers and decent dexterity but find thumbing a trackpad way less accurate than using a trackpoint. This may be a matter of practice, but there's still more hand movement required even to get my thumb over the trackpad.

Not sure where that argument comes from -- it's certainly not one I've ever made. I personally really prefer the nub over touch pad, but it has nothing to do with not having to move my fingers away from the keyboard.

I mean, given the option of a physical mouse, I will always prefer that over both nub and track pad -- and the physical mouse requires the most movement away from the keyboard (of course, to avoid all three mouse input methods I use keyboard shortcuts when possible).

Anyway, my reasons for preferring the nub are:

* Less movement required on the actual input device. Just a slight tilt of the finger can move the mouse cursor from anywhere to anywhere else.

* Higher accuracy. This one may be subjective, only personal applicable, and/or biased, but I think the nub just makes it so much easier to navigate compared to the touch pad.

I don't get that argument either. My main case for the eraser-nub-mouse is that I don't have to physically move my finger over and over again. It goes like this, put finger in one corner, drag finger, reach end of touch surface, lift finger, put finger again on the opposite side, drag again... until you reach destination.

I don't think most people use trackpads with their thumbs.

This is one of those use cases that I'd be interested in seeing some research on. Personally, it depends a great deal on what I am doing, but I often use my thumbs to do minor navigations when within a document. Particularly because I have some RSI issues and using my thumb seems to less of an aggravation. Milage, I'm sure, varies, but I suspect that there is a subset of folks that at least use their thumbs a bit.

I find it very difficult to get the sort of control that I want with my thumbs.

But if you're using two finger scrolling this doesn't work so well. Also, while I can use my thumbs they aren't long enough for me to easily be able to access all corners of the trackpad with one thumb.

I've played 1000+ hours of Minecraft on my Thinkpad. That would be torture with a touchpad but it's a joy with the nub (which is basically a very small joystick). Why they went with touchpads over traditional dual-joystick input with community managed zero configuration mouse-keyboard emulation I really don't understand.

And I've played a fair amount of Minecraft on my MacBook. I find the trackpad to be quite nice. I've gotten to where I can play most FPS games and feel like I'm very close to where I would be if I were using a mouse.

Yeah but to be fair the lenovo track pad is bad compared to a macbook trackpad and they are made by the same manufacturer. So on the thinkpad it makes sense that people use the nub when the trackpad experience is pretty bad.

I was a nub user. Then I got a Macbook Pro. So far this is the only touchpad I can use. The IBM and Lenovo Thinkpads are the only nubs I can use also. Everything else feels terrible and unusable.

> Not all. Lenovo still provides eraser nub-style pointers on many models. I personally find them to be more accurate at high speeds than a touchpad.

I use the nub on my thinkpad, but only because Lenovo's touchpads are truly woeful.

As does HP and Dell