A rat...sorry, mouse... is a device that people who do programing and text editing came up with, so they could now and again click on something on the screen.
This is ok, because most of the time you are typing, and only sometimes your right (or left) hand wanders over to this innocent looking device.
But if you are in the CAD business, you end up holding your pointer 8 hours in a row. Ergo, carpal tunnel syndrome and worse.
But hey, there is a pointing device that has been around for quite some time: the pen.
This device has a long Darwinian history, so it most certainly fits the job. It is easy to hold, it allows your wrist to stay straight, even you back end up thanking you.
Having seen designers use this pen (designers are usually faster than architects on experimenting with new stuff) I gave it a try.
Sure enough, it gets some using to. About one or two sessions. But it is like learning to ride a bike. You fall off a lot, and suddenly you are riding it. Click. Off, on. And the you are flying.
As I said, I have been using it for some 4 years now, and am currently on my 4th model. Once, when a pen crashed, I had to work for 2 weeks with the mouse.
I found out you can still work perfectly well with a mouse after working with a pen. If you learn to drive a car, you don't forget how to drive a bike. But after 3 days of working with that d*** rat, I started to have back, shoulder and neck aches.
The rat doesn't only mess up your wrist. As your whole upper body has to rotate slightly, after 8 h in this position there is bound to be some damage!
I still work with a small rat on my laptop, but never for a long time, and it is not harder to do. But boy, I would never go back to that pesky animal, after learning to use the pen.
As for brands, my advice is, go for Wacom. It is the only one I know off (may be others of course) that doesn't use batteries, so the pen is lighter and it never ever crashes. Never!
Graphire 3 classic http://www.my-graphire.com/main.asp?lang=1 is quite enough for us (it doesn't have a tilt sensitivity, which we don't need). It is a small size tablet (A6), which is great for us. Designers need bigger tablets, as to be able to do hand drawings with arm movements, but ours is a precision work, so A6 works fine even with 2 monitors (currently with 2000 dpi sensitivity, opposed to 800 dpi from most rats).
Another important feature is it must have two buttons. One you program as a right rat button, the other as a left double click (double clicking with your wrist can be difficult).
And for those guys who cant live without a scroll weel (I personally hate it) you can always take you favorite rodent, extract the sphere, and use it in your left hand.
Or better still, buy a Sidewinder Strategic Commander, but thats a whole different forum
Have fun guys
