Built in laptop mice

[the musicman]

I was wondering if any of you guys know which manufacturers still use those little button mice in the centre of the keyboard ? Alot of them only do the touch sensitive pads now.

I know Dell do some with the touch sensitive pad and the little button on the keyboard but they are quite expensive.

 

[The_Other_One]

I think IBM was the first(or one of) that used that type of mouse...stick...thingy I do recall seeing some fairly recnet dells as you mentioned with the stick. I think many IBMs(Lenovo) still use it too. Otherwise, I don't know of others.

 

[lb562high]

i wanna see some links since ive never heard or seen this kinda thing...please

 

[AdmnPower]

http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/user/tp/trackpt.gif

there would be a link for you, the buttons used for clicking are just below the space bar, i don't think you can see them in that picture.

 

[Jiffyman]

How do those touch sensitive pads work? I've tried moving to mouse with an eraser and that didn't work it only seems to work with my finger. Is it heat sensitive?

 

[leSHok]

when i was like 10 i thought an eraser got stuck in there and so i was trying to take it out...i like the touch pad way more

 

[The_Other_One]

I'd heard something about them using static, but never looked into it. From Wiki:

Touchpads commonly operate by sensing the capacitance(a measure of the amount of electric charge stored (or separated) for a given electric potential.) of a finger, or the capacitance between sensors. Capacitive sensors are laid out along the horizontal and vertical axes of the touchpad.

 

[AdmnPower]

cool, i thought it was heat.

 

[the musicman]

i used to use one on my Toshiba laptop, all the way back from 1997. It has only recently died on me and i think i would be better off getting a new laptop rather than trying to repair that one. I have only used the touchpads a couple of times and i hate them. So i will have to make sure my new laptop has a 'nipple' instead of a touchpad.