Interesting idea. But half the benefit of the trackpoint is being in the middle of the keyboard. You don’t really have to move your hand to go from typing to nipppling. Also how well is that thing going to stay in place? If you’re moving the cursor fast you’re putting good pressure on the nipple. If it had a wrist rest it might not be so bad.
I appreciate the name and am a fan of flicking the bean, but I can’t imagine picking up one of these. If I have the space to put this beside the laptop, then I have the space to operate a mouse.
It’s possible to get keyboards with an integrated pointing stick, which is how I think most people use them. It’s just that most laptops don’t provide it as an option, so your options are very limited if you want that.
https://www.amazon.com/HHKB-Hacking-Keyboard-Wireless-Bluetooth/dp/B0DGR1JD36
or:
https://www.pckeyboard.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=UB40PGA
(I own one of the latter, and can’t recommend it; while the buckling spring keyswitches are pretty much immortal, the mouse button switches wore out long before they did.
Honestly, what I’d really like is for a non-all-in-one form factor to be available. Like…laptops are intrinsically limiting, because I have to take what the laptop vendor chooses. That selection is limited. And today, laptops aren’t very modular. With a laptop, I can’t pick whatever touchpad or keyboard or whatever I want in the way that I can a desktop unless I haul both the built-in one and an external USB one.
I’d like to see something where there’s just a standard frame that opens that a display, keyboard, and touchpad/trackball/nipple mouse can be mounted on and then have the body of the PC separate, on a cable, so that the weight and heat isn’t there. That provides a lot more flexibility as to options. Mini-PCs can kind-of sort-of do the separate PC, though there’s no standard for attaching the input and display stuff, but there isn’t a convention for them having a battery whose charge they can monitor and act on.
I don’t personally care for the Thinkpad-style pointing stick, which is what this is aimed at addressing. But I damned well do want a touchpad with three physical buttons, which Thinkpads also have had. I can get external USB devices like that, but for integrated stuff, I’m pretty much at the laptop vendor’s mercy.
Very cool that it’s completely Open-source, mechanical parts, electronic and software, all included in the repo ! It’s a project I would be interested in doing.
