Electronics Trends

Outstanding!
this trackball is fantastic. I bought it as I have carpal tunnell - I use it alongside my regular mouse - but have hardly used the old mouse! Worth every penny!

Good hardware, pathetic software
I've used the SlimBlade trackball for about a month on my Mac with OS X.4, Tiger, on a PPC Mini. The hardware itself is fine -- pretty, solidly constructed, and ergonomically easy on the hand. The software, which should give you control of button action & tracking and scrolling speed is pathetic -- far inferior to the previous software, Kensington Mouseworks, that powered all their previous mice and trackballs. You are stuck basically with the very limited control the built-in Mac mouse control panel gives.

For Mac OS X at least, if you need customizable button action and precise acceleration control, you can get USB Overdrive control panel for [..], and that works well, if you can figure out the complex setup. I decided against using that, but did install and use the free Mouse Acceleration control you can get from triq.net (search: mouse acceleration preference pane); another alternative is the [...] SteerMouse control panel.

I had one serious problem -- with the Mac in sleep mode, having the SlimBlade connected would invariably cause the Mac to wake up during the night at random times. It wouldn't wake up if I unplugged the SlimBlade at USB hub, but I didn't want to do that every night! Eventually I discovered that removing the ball from its socket before putting Mac to sleep would prevent the problem. I just stick the ball back in the socket in the morning to wake the Mac up. No random wakings since I started doing this.

kensington slimblade
bad customer service the website will not let me log in message "cannot find account"
i try to create account and says "already registered"
i used expert mouse for 10 years with the same registered email address as now...........
I call and they say go online and log in
this is a bad product.....i buy kensington for their drivers and this product has default windows adjustments The driver with this product is pointless
they have blocked me out of my account and there is nothing i can do about it
Me thinks this product was complete failure and they are avoiding everyone

Great trackball in poor package
The trackball itself is excellent. It has a very smooth solid feel and needs much less cleaning than other trackballs I have used. If the rest of the package was as good as the trackball it would be a great product.

The physical buttons feel flimsy. They stick occasionally, meaning I have to press harder than usual to get a response and it makes a louder noise, then it works normally for a while. The buttons are long thin flanges of plastic that, when not sticking, work and respond well. But the long thin flange looks like it would snap right off even though it would never happen.

The button programmability is pretty much missing. You can download the Kensington drivers that turn the top two buttons into mode buttons, like sticky modifier keys that affect the behavior of the trackball and lower buttons. While the modes, navigate and media, are nifty they are not really that useful especially as dedicated modes of operation. And the navigation mode is disabled unless it recognizes the current application. The navigation mode is trying to simulate touchpad gestures but does a bad job of it. Note also that the device does not ship with any drivers, you must download them.

If you do not want two dead or useless buttons on your device, you have to go with a third party driver. As far as I can tell there are two choices, both of which cost about . After playing with both, I have opted for the dead buttons. I use a laptop and swap out monitors and input devices fairly often, and neither handled the swaps well. I am not reviewing the third party controllers, but it is a negative mark that everyone feels compelled to use them.

The USB cable itself is wrapped in woven fabric like a black seatbelt instead of the standard matte plastic. I liked it but you may not.

If the physical buttons did not stick for no apparent reason, I could deal with the perceived flimsiness. If the native drivers could be configured, I would be much happier. For me, I like the idea of the mode buttons but not the implementation. I would like the option to use them as modifiers instead of being sticky, so holding the left button and scrolling would control volume instead of the current click on, scroll, click off. And I would like the option to have standard mouse buttons that can be recognized and configured by the operating system. The navigation mode needs to be much more generic to be usable, emulating gestures instead of sending commands to a small list of applications.

The thing I would like most is a Kensington thumb trackball.

Slightly better than ok = 3 1/2 stars
first the positive:

it looks cool
it's built well
it's easy to install

now the negative:

scrolling isn't as easy as slimbade media mouse
it's not wireless, which is obovious but i overlooked it.
it's not easy to program certain functions.