How to input?

[Nigel]

My mouse has grown a beard that impedes its tracking, so I'm looking for a new input device. There are so many options out there I'd like to hear others' experiences to help make a decision. Civ and SMAC have the largest share of time used on my PC, with ocasional forrays into RTS. I plan to try out a lot of the games from the 'which is best' thread too.

I'm focusing on trackballs or optical mice (wheel being mandatory). The knock on trackballs I've experienced is a high failure rate. Is this still true? How do optical mice hold up?

I've also seen this 'command center' which is a smooth crescent that floats an inch in any direction and has multiple buttons for each finger. It was linked with AoE in an ad I saw. Has anyone here used one?

Any feedback on how these devices do with TBS games and general file management is appreciated. I can't afford to experiment too much right now.

[Deimos]

I use one of the Microsoft optical mice, and I love it! It has excellent precision, a good weight, and best of all, no more mouse ball cleaning sessions.

I haven't used the MS Strategic Commander myself, but it has been receiving quite a number of good reviews around the web.

Check out the these two reviews. The one on Tech Extreme even mentions using the device with AC.
Avault
Tech Extreme

[Deimos]

Yes, the optical mice do not work with any surface that is reflective or clear. But they work great on ones head...not that I would know this from personal experience or anything

[Didymus]

What Deimos said, with one caveat:

do not use an optical mouse with a holographic mousepad.

Um, not that I know this from personal experience or anything....

[VoodooChild]

Beware that some software programs (SMAC and SMAX included) will have conflict errors with the wheel. There is a tab in the mouse config that will allow you turn the wheel off when a particular program is run.

Otherwise I love my optical mouse and wheel.

Also in case you didn't know.... you can get rid of that beard by removing the ball and using an eraser to scrape off the gunk.

[Black Sunrise]

To get rid of that wheel bug, press ctrl-alt-delete and end task on "mswheel".
It's a program they installed with early versions of win98, to run the wheel. After they installed the program, they found out it works w/o the program. Plus they found out it interfers with some things.
Black Sunrise
slave to teck support
rndll is something I end task a lot, too, btw.

[Nigel]

I've been shaving the beard off that old mouse for years. It doesn't improve anything anymore.

I picked up the basic MS optical wheelmouse, but I don't seem to have the USB or PS/2 ports it requires. Is there and expansion card for the USB (Universal Serial Bus?) port or is it just on newer PCs?

That strategic commander look worth picking up in addition. One question the reviews didn't seem to address: why is it for the left hand?

[Deimos]

Nigel,
You can pick up a PCI expansion card that has at least 2, if not 4 USB ports on it. Also the Strategic Commander is designed to be used with the left hand so that the right can still control the mouse. This concept is more important for RTS games like Age of Empires, where you need the mouse to select/move units, and use the SC as a keyboard short cut replacement.