I have an on-off/love-hate relationship with trackballs…

2026-09-26: Hm, I thought that I had published this – but no, it was still an unfinished draft from 2021-06-13 in my folder.
Anyways, I haven’t used a trackball for a long time: Since 2024-04, I use a Logitech MX Vertical mouse.
But on the other hand, maybe I’ll come back to it some time later. That’s why this gets now published as-is.

Like probably 99.9% of all people that start off with PCs, my first (few) input devices, next to the keyboard, were standard PC mice; initally mechanical ones even (i.e. with a real moving ball on the bottom side for tracking, no laser) and without a scroll-wheel.

That evolved over the years (optical, scrollwheel, additional buttons), but I was never into much more advanced models (but at that time, IIRC, the era of hundreds of models with a dozen button and all sorts of gimmicks hadn’t dawned anyways).

Then, for some reason I can’t recall anylonger, I tested my first trackball. And I also can’t remember which one of these two I bought first: Either the Logitech Trackball Marble or the Microsoft Explorer 1.0.

But I do remember that I wasn’t very happy with the Microsoft Trackball Explorer 1.0 and used the Logitech Trackball Marble instead for a while (although I already was missing the scroll wheel a bit).

Then, after a while, again I can’t recall why, I went back to a PC mouse, and that continued in some intervalls over the years.

Now, mid-2021, I’m again at a point where I’m more interested in trackballs; might be related because I did strain my hands and arms abit too much, during the Corona home office time, espically because I worked most of the time with the company laptops (something about … work/free time).

That has changed now (for… reason), and I sit at home on my normal desk again.

So, my idea to reduce the strain a bit more (which was caused mainly by using the notebook’s keyboard and trackpad for too long), was to use one of my trackballs again.

So, I tested the Kensington Orbit Optical very briefly again, then came back to my trused fellow, the Logitech Trackball Marble. But again, it was not perfect: No scroll wheel and the two extra buttons where pretty small. Additionally, the driver software SetPoint had changed and allowed less customization than previous versions.

So I investigated a bit and ended up with a Kensington Expert Mouse – which I now used for several weeks but can’t really connect to: Despite what I expected, the form (with the steep angle) is not the primary negative aspect (although it’s not perfect), but the whole handling (positions of ball, buttons, scroll wheel) doesn’t really fit, it seems.

So, some time later, I remembererd dimly, that I had yet another trackball stowed away at my parent’s house. Found the Microsoft Trackball Explorer, and quickly dismissed again.

But again, some weeks later, still not happy with the Kensington Expert Mouse, and reading more about the Microsoft Trackball Explorer, I give it now a try. And, it’s actually not bad.

The only real downside are listed below. But after the first day, it looks very promising (first time after negleting it for the last 15+ years)…

The trackball devices I have used yet

Logitech Trackball Marble

• …

Microsoft Trackball Explorer 1.0

• [+] Good fit for my hand
• [-] Mainbutton (‘Left click’) seems a bit stubborn
• [-] Drivers/Win10
• [-] Missing (Driver): Button chording

Kensington Orbit Optical

Found it somewhere in an abandonted drawer, cleaned it up and used it for a couple of days.
Unfortunately, its was not a really good match: Can’t remember anymore, but I even think that the form was not the main issue(?)

• [-] Lack of scroll wheel
• [-] Only two buttons

Kensington Expert Mouse

• …