Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Not for everyone November 6, 2008
David Ira (California, USA)
The product works as advertised, but, at least for me, it is even worse for wrist and hand issues than a conventional mouse. With a mouse, it is possible to rest your hand lightly on the mouse. With this touch pad, it is necessary to keep your hand suspended, since touching the pad (obviously) acts as a click. By adjusting the mouse settings in Windows, the degree of needed wrist action to use a mouse can be reduced to little more than with this touch pad. In addition, like touch pads that I have used on laptops, it can be a little inconsistent--it seems like sometimes you have to whack it to get a response while other times just getting near it causes something to happen. As noted in other reviews, the buttons feel cheap.
 Excellent with XP October 12, 2008
Zen Williston (Heavenly Valley, NV United States)
This is the best touchpad I have ever used. It is so functional, allowing a great deal of surfing without ever touching the keyboard. It is way overpriced, however, and should be half the current price.
 Eliminates wrist issues but works minimally on Vista 64 September 22, 2008
George Saridakis (Groton, MA USA)
Cannot get the Adesso driver to install on Vista 64, and email to Adesso support has gone unanswered.
Fortunately, built in Vista drivers provide touch pad and l/r click functionality which is what I must minimally have.
I found this helped me eliminate wrist pain that I had with mouse usage.
 Much Better for Your Hands September 5, 2008
photofanatic
This thing is great. I ditched my mouse and got this about 4 weeks ago. In that time, the finger joint and wrist pain I had been experiencing has disappeared. Ergonomically, mice are bad for you. If you use one occasionally, not a big deal. But especially if you have carpal tunnel or tendonitis, or are developing symptoms, GET RID OF YOUR MOUSE. Personally, I spend a LOT of time on my computer, and this has made a big difference. I wish I had bought one a few years ago. I miss the precision of the mouse, but this thing does surprisingly well. And I definitely don't miss the pain.
The buttons have a medium-light, tactile click to them. I usually use the tapping gestures, though, because it twists my hands into strange positions to be pointing with one finger and clicking with my thumb.
I can't comment on the durability, because I've only had it for a few weeks, but the tapping seems to work fine. Every so often, it clicks when I don't want it to, and sometimes the vertical scroll bar doesn't activate. I think that's common for this technology, though. I'm still very glad I got this.
Also, I wanted to mention that I deliberately picked this one over the model with the four programmable buttons along the left. First, I wanted all the "mousing" area I could get. This was a good choice, because I often hit the edges of the pad. It would be very annoying to have less area. Second, I don't install drivers unless I absolutely have to. This thing runs fine without drivers, and I doubt that those four extra buttons would do anything without extra software. "Keep it simple" is good. The drivers add up, and before you know it, your system has 150 processes running in the background, and it's slowed to a crawl!
Works well on both Windows and Mac February 28, 2008
Josh Wardell (Newton, MA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I bought this for use on my Mac desktop and took a chance on how well it would work. I plugged it into a PC as well. Without any special software installed, both machines (XP, MacOS 10.5) supported most of its functions. Tap-dragging, vertical scrolling, the top-right right click tap area work. The two physical buttons on the sides are both perceived as a middle mouse button. But I could not get them to be recognized as separate buttons, and the horizonal scrolling also was not supported (this is not a surprise as most mice act the same way without specific drivers). I did try installing USB overdrive as suggested by Alps, but it did not enable any more functions. But the good news is it is not needed.
As for the device itself, it has a reasonably large touch area and works well. The only complaint might be the quality of the physical buttons is a little disappointing; mostly that they rattle in place and can make a cheap plastic sound when you tap the touchpad hard, though functionally they are fine.
Most people can't stand touchpads, commonly found in laptops. But in reality they only take a few days to master and once you do you'll find them much better for your wrists than a mouse. You also get a lot of desktop real estate back because it does not need to move.
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