They do, but I've had severe quality/lifetime issues with them. Three Kensington trackballs, two different models, all three lasted under a year for me.
Strange. I have lots of Kensington Expert Mouse trackballs, some of which I have used for 7+ years, and none have ever given out on me. I have a stockpile of spares in case they stop making them, but they seem to be built very well.
Which models did you have problems with, and what went wrong?
Never tried the Expert Mouse in particular. Two of mine were slimblades, one orbit with scroll wheel. Different failures each time -
Orbit - broken plastic around one of the bearings. ball no longer turned smoothly or straight in every direction, and dragged.
Slimblade #1 - began to operate erratically. I believe it was a failure of some kind with one of the optical sensors, but I never was able to figure it out consistently.
Slimblade #2 - microswitch under the LMB failed mechanically, no longer triggered.
the slimblade's were provided by my employer at the time, the orbit was purchased personally for at home - it's use overlapped with the slimblades at work.
I don't think I'm super unusually hard on my trackballs - My Elecom Huge lasted for ~6 years before the soft touch plastic finally got a bit gross from skin oil contact, but still was functionally fine, and my current protoarc is going strong two years in.
Fundamentally, a limit on doing it at scale is that it for efficiency it requires the heat to be consumed near the production - and the bulk of large power intense data centres are not located in the midst of high density residential neighbourhoods with a demand for heat.
I grabbed an alphagrip from the ewaste bin at my local hackspace a few years ago. Gave it a solid week - which was enough for me to get at least marginally competent with the layout. I found it extremely awkward. I think the compact controller style forces your wrists into an awkward angle, so any advantages of minimizing fingers motion is compromised by the awkward neutral position.
Sloppy back switch mechanisms and a really bad trackball on top.
Too uncomfortable to use full time, to awkward to hunt and peck for an occasional couch/TV navigation keyboard - It went back in the ewaste bin.
I've been on a kinesis advantage 360 for a few years, after an ergodox and the older fixed size Advantages. Been eyeing the Svalboard, thanks for sharing your experiences!
Nice! I've never managed to try one myself, but I did assume something like that would be the case. To be fair to them, they never really promise hand ergonomics — just the freedom to type while in weird positions. I guess it's kind of the opposite of the Svalboard, in that way. If I had problems sitting in a conventional typing position, maybe that tradeoff would be worth it.
I love the Advantages and I really missed the bowling when I moved to the Ergodox — it remains my only real complaint with that keyboard family.
I've usually seen "thumb clusters" used for those style of key layouts, rather than thumb pads.
I've been using some variant of the Kinesis Advantage line for over 10 years - currently the Advantage360, their split board. I used an ergodox for a few years before that.
The Advantages are all 3d curved layouts with thumb clusters like the Maltron, and I haven't had RSI issues since making the move. The 360pro runs ZMK for firmware customization, and the stands do support different tenting angles.
Worth a try if you're looking for a more direct alternative to the Maltron.
On an old team that did this, we joked that the cleaning staff had as much control of the roadmap as the product managers.
The cheap offbrand sticky notes didn't stick very well, so after one or two status changes, or just being on the wall for a while, they tended to fall to the floor. If we were lucky they'd get stuck somewhere at random, and not just thrown out.
>There isn't some industry saying "yes we could cut and cover here, but we prefer the slower more expensive option of a TBM"!
At least for Vancouver, there was absolutely an industry arguing for the slower-more-expensive TBM option on a route that followed exactly a road (the Broadway line extension) - local businesses along the route. The previous line which was mostly done by Cut-and-Cover (the Canada Line) had a very major impact on businesses along the route for years.
There are plenty of people who will acknowledge that something is cheaper _overall_ but the impact on a small group being higher can make them extremely vocal, and that has to be managed in public projects.
> I see that [...] Canada line under Vancouver chose tunnels over cut and cover because it was cheaper.
Canada Line was mostly Cut-and-Cover - only the bits below downtown and crossing below the water were bored, the bulk of the underground was done cut and cover for cost and speed to make sure it opened for the 2010 olympics.
It was not a popular choice - not really announced before the project was approved, and local businesses along the route took a big hit.
Vancouver's current Broadway Line Extension is being done with TBMs to avoid the impact that the cut and cover canada line segment construction had.
Sewer are properly buried, Rogers cables are just thrown around with maybe a bit of dirt on top of it was a good day.
I redid a wall in my backyard last year that is close to a Rogers box, I removed ~15 old cut cables from the ground.
Man if there's one thing I can credit bell for, is that they really pushed for fiber. Before we had bell fibe here (for a shockingly reasonable price) in Montreal, we were stuck with absolute trash DOCSIS for so long. Every time the revisions increased ,the speeds would be nominally faster but in reality came with trash stability and peak time performance.
I'm sure DOCSIS is great for what it is, and in fact it's extremely impressive what it can do with existing cable lines, but the second biggest player here (Videotron) basically milked it dry. Again it's weird to praise them but Bell invested in wiring up the entire city and suburbs and I can get 3gbps symmetrical GPON FTTH for the price that 150mbps used to go for not even 3 years ago. I blame DOCSIS in a way because it made players with existing lines extremely complacent
Went about an hour north of Vancouver BC Canada to get away from bit city lights and watch.
It was probably not the brightest small strands I've ever seen - if my memories of Northern Saskatchewan as a kid are still accurate - but I don't think I've seen the whole sky light up to such an extent.
magenta and green colours were clearly visible in person during the intense periods, although obviously not as bright or intense as long exposure photos. Solidly visible bands for at least the two hours I stayed out.
