I can guaran-damn-tee you that HTML done it to me, but that's a rant for another day. In-between having to crank out an abundance of flow charts for the day job, and working the HTML hereabouts, I was looking at the possibility of hacking no more. Bad. Sad. Scary.

Panic's fine, so far as it goes; it gives way to action soon enough. I grabbed the horn, got MacConnection on the line and ordered me up a GlidePoint Trackpad. This is what modern PowerBooks sport. I always thought they were cool looking, and it was my mouse hand that was going south on me, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Making the switch from mouse to trackpad was pretty simple. While they'll let you tap on the pad to double click on hotspots, I found that process pretty frustrating. Sometimes it took, sometimes not. I remembered what I used to feel like after extended video game play. This was *not* going in the right direction.

There are 3 buttons on the GlidePoint. The default settings offer a "click and drag", a "double click", and the workhorse "single click". You can decide which buttons are which, or you can assign other functions to the buttons. You can also decide in what orientation you'd like to use the beast. Being a simple guy, I didn't take them up on any options but the default, disabled the "tapping" ability, and got down to work.

Well, I'd like to say my wrists got better, but I can't. I put off this review for a couple weeks, wanting to see if familiarity might breed affection, but the best I got to was a respectful stand-off.

The buttons were the thing I liked best. Being able to select a word with a single click comes in handy. Using menus with the "click and drag" button was a major improvement, just about worth the trip. I've been putting in more Wintel time of late, and there are things about 95 that I've been getting fond of: most particularly being able to click on a menu and having the thing stay open till I make up my mind. The GlidePoint gives me that same functionality Mac-side. (I hear the latest Mac OS does this trick as well. You know me, though, I'm the poster boy for tech's trailing edge. I'll probably move up to 8 after Rhapsody ships...)

Using just one finger, instead of a whole arm, has not been a big improvement. In some cases, I found it more frustrating, when it came time for the close in work. I've got 13 years of mouse time, I'm used to it. I found the detail work very frustrating, trying to grab onto a resize handle or come in on the right side of a comma. In fact, I found myself using more keyboard navigation than ever before, both the arrows and my new love: "home" & "end". (As Brother Ray might say, "How long has this been goin' on?")

During the test time, Gareth did his piece on those Handeze Gloves? While I was rolling that one on-line, I clicked through and bought me a pair, the pretty blue ones. My wrists seem to be stabilizing, for which I'm thanking the gloves, not the nouveau mouse. Still, I'm keeping the GlidePoint up and running, out in the office trailer. I figure it can't hurt to split my time between mousin' in the house & glidin' in the trailer.