Kensington 64325 Black 4 Buttons USB Wired TrackBall Ultimate Trackball Mouse

Pros: Easy to use, works on Macintosh, Windows, and Linux. Ball is big enough to be accurate, not a crude marble like some trackballs. Ambidextrous. I don't really use the top two buttons often, but they can be useful. The scroll ring is also big enough to be accurate. Note that I don't make much use of the software, certainly not under Linux, but also not much under Mac OS X. I don't use Windows other than in a VM, but it seems to work fine there.

Cons: Gets dirty and is hard to clean. While you can turn the unit upside down to get the ball out, then blow on the cradle and rub the three contact points to get dust off, dust and hair/fur can also get into the unit past the lights that track the ball. That's harder to clean. That's why I took off one egg.

Other Thoughts: I've been using this model of track ball and its predecessor models since the late 1980s. They're great. The main improvement I'd like to see is for the mechanical bits to be sealed from dirt, and/or a way to clean inside the unit that doesn't require a screwdriver and voiding the warranty.

Pros: Installed no problem with Windows 7. Fast shipping. Top buttons will take some getting used to. Good feel and really comfortable even after hours of use. A definite must for someone who had multiple wrist surgeries like myself.

Cons: Scroll ring looks hard to clean. Might get real nasty after a year of use if you don't wash your hands regularly.

Other Thoughts: Comes with a free comfortable hand rest which snaps into place...however one of the cheap snaps broke off during the installation....but what the heck it's still free right? A little hidden duct tape underneath fixed it right up and the hand rest now stays in place and no one's the wiser.

I'm still giving it a 5 star rating as it's still an excellent trackball mouse hand rest or not.

Pros: Trackball itself is good. The scroll ring feels cheap, but otherwise the device is good. I like the large ball size and the buttons have a quality click feel.

Cons: The drivers for Windows made my system unusable. I had to unplug the trackball, plug in another mouse in order to regain control and get to the place where I could uninstall the driver. I ended up using the generic Windows 8 mouse driver. This limits the functionality of the trackball, and the pointer speed, even when set at maximum, is a little slow with the generic Windows driver. It appears to me that Kensington has for years made really bad trackball drivers and continues to do so.

Other Thoughts: Strongly recommend not getting this trackball if you are using Windows 8 64-bit and cannot live with the generic Windows driver.

Pros: This trackball has a large layout with the ball in the center of the unit. It's very easy to roll the ball around with the palm of your hand and use the buttons without cramping your fingers. The scroll wheel has a rubbery grip texture and spins smoothly.

I have one of these at work and one at home.

Cons: You have to install the software if you want the pointer motion to be at a useful speed. Without the special acceleration you won't get good performance.

I've found that the scroll speed scaling adversely affects zooming in some applications. For instance, in Adobe Reader you can hold the CTRL key in and scroll to zoom in and out. With the Kensington scroll settings this ends up on either max or min zoom settings almost immediately, there is no fine control. If I change the scroll wheel settings so that the zoom feature works well then scrolling in an application is very slow and tedious.

Other Thoughts: Overall this is a very good product. I've owned two previous Expert Trackballs over the last 10 - 15 years. The only reason I'm not still using the first one is that I needed to migrate from a serial connection to USB, and then Microsoft introduced the scroll wheel and I wanted to take advantage of this option.

Pros: I have been using this trackball for about 4 years and it is great. I even use it for gaming because it is so precise. Recently one of the small ruby support balls the main ball glides on went missing and the cursor started to drift a bit on me. I contacted Kensington and they replaced the 4+year old trackball with a brand new one, no sweat.
That is a company that stands behind their product.

Cons: This mouse is better than the newer Slimblade, because I do not like the way Kensington messed up the operation of the Slimblade. However, this tech is getting old and needs on the fly DPI switching and the ability to toggle the scrolling from ratcheted to an infinite glide mode like on some Logitech mice.

Pros: One of few options for trackball users. Nifty idea and probably great for none first person shooter game.

Cons: The software and drivers are not very user friendly. At first I couldn't get the my game to recognize all of the of the buttons. It took me about 2-3 hours to figure out what I needed to change. After I figured it out it was very awkward to control in the game. Outside of the game it was only ok. For a $90 piece of gear I expected smoother operation. The scroll ring didn't turn smoothly and the ball seemed to have "catches" in it.

Other Thoughts: I think possibly the orbit might be better for gamers. It is unfortunate that very few companies are making trackballs for gamers. Better programmability and more robust components are a must. Logitech's M570 is cheap and poorly made. I've gone through two of them in less than six months. Logitech has been good about replacing them.

Pros: Accuracy, Serviceability, Large Diameter Ball Ergonomic.

Cons: Small learning curve

Other Thoughts: I service a lot of computers and am often cramped for surface space. I used this device most frequently for that purpose. No mouse pad, no cleared space for a mouse...

No matter what PC I plop down on my workbench this device just works. When multitasking on several PCs its very nice to just lean over and give the ball a jog to begin or end a task.

Pros: functionality, durability

Cons: driver issues with some programs

Other Thoughts: I want to set the record straight on a couple of issues surfaced on this board. I actually love this device. I gave it one egg so that people looking for disgruntled users would read this. I've been using Kensington trackballs exclusively for over 15 years. The older mechanical ones needed cleaned occasionally and so some may down grade for that. The new laser ball does not have that problem. The scroll ring is great and is not flimsy. I own 3 of these and use them all day every day. There have been driver issues in the past. What has been said here about Windows 7 drivers is no longer true if it ever was. The driver is version 1.1 and works with Windows 7. FYI, there aren't many trackballs around. This is the best. It does everything better than a mouse.

Pros: We have used these at our recording studio for ages - they are very versatile and use much less space than a mouse. I've been using a Logitech Trackman Cordless for ages but I finally got fed up with changing the batteries and the poor reception. Honestly, if Logitech made a non-cordless version, I would pick up another one of those in a heartbeat.

That said, Kensington absolutely gets the trackball part of this right. It's got great weight, letting you 'throw' the cursor to where you need it. The optical tracking is far better than the Logitech's, which would occasionally backskip when trying to move the trackball quickly.

Cons: Kensington has made a lot of compromising design choices in an effort to keep this a dual right and left handed device. The scroll ring is terrible. Kensington goes on and on about how great the 'precise fingertip scrolling' is in their marketing material. Using it mostly requires more than one finger, and is always accompanied by a grinding plastic-on-plastic sound. They really should be using teflon or steel ball bearings and give the scroll ring some weight rather than using plastic for everything.
The upper buttons are a bit hard to reach sometimes, too, and their position makes it hard to hold down a button while using the scroll ring. The buttons are also all extremely loud, for some reason. In a cheap, ringy plastic way, not a good way.

Other Thoughts: I use a Mac 10.6. The software seems to work fine, the only minor gripe is that when setting a button to 'scroll lock' (track scroll) using it with the trackball only allows scrolling in the vertical direction, replicating a scroll wheel. It would be nice if scroll lock allowed 360 degree scrolling with the trackball. 'Single axis movement' is also extremely useful for applications that don't include the standard 'hold shift/control to do single axis actions' functionality.

In the end, what are you going to do? Buy a trackball feels like schoolyard bullying at this point, but this is probably the best of a bad lot.

Pros: accuracy,feel,build quality

Cons: learning curve

Other Thoughts: like it alot. different feel, took a gamble and i enjoy it for fps