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From: kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Observations on the Portable
Message-ID: <119138@felix.UUCP>
Date: 17 Oct 89 14:51:35 GMT
References: <463b736d.1285f@maize.engin.umich.edu>
Sender: daemon@felix.UUCP
Reply-To: kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr)
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In article <463b736d.1285f@maize.engin.umich.edu> mystone@caen.engin.umich.edu (Dean Yu) writes:
 
<  The trackball is the weakest point on the portable.  Let's face it.  It's
<not a replacement for the mouse.  While I could move around ok, and the nice
<big bar of a button is nice, it's still rather awkward.

I used a trackball for quite a while and got used to how they work, but the
trackball on our "trial for one day" portable was just too sloppy. The 
tiniest movement sends the cursor flying. Try drawing two boxes and lining
them up. You can't remove your hand from the trackball without changing the
size of the box.

Also, I really miss the extended keyboard, so to make it useful, we'd have
to get the numeric keypad to restore some of that functionality. Also, the
second meg of memory would be necessary to run current drawing programs
that eat up nearly a meg for themselves. 

We may still get one because we have to go to different systems and 
different buildings to collect data for the manuals. It's more efficient
to write and draw right there than to handwrite and go back to your system
trying to make sense of your notes.


Shirley Kehr