First, its true!, we showed Apple that the trackpoint is at least 20% faster than the trackpad for text editing,,, they said... "yeah but its ibm not apple's branded input device"... apple is still a marketing company

At first the trackpoint catapulted IBM into a new and important market, moving them from not being able to sell even a few thousand laptops a year, to selling billions of dollars of them a year... SO THEY WOULDN'T LET US SELL THE POINTING DEVICE TO ANYONE, EVEN THOUGH THEY WANTED IT... FOR TWO YEARS. by then their were 5 copycats ... that sucked... sullying the TrackPoint luster... so they let us sell it.... but it was a bit late and the price IBM charged was a bit tough to pay... still: at least HP, Zenith, TI, SONY, used the real thing for a while Dell did licence it for some of their machines BUT,,,, they put these really stiff buttons on them that were like 5 times as stiff in the front as in the back... bad buttons can completely negate all productivity gains... Dell was told,,, and i would be happy ... even now ... to help ,,, some have conjectured that Dell put the TrackPoint in to get people to move away from the ThinkPad, and when it didn't work, they would "get used to the pad" and not pay the premium for ThinkPad again...

A lot of vendors actually did, though with different names (HP called it PointStick and Dell called it Track Stick - I think both were blue).

I'm also very fond of my Trackpoint, although heavy usage does give me some nasty RSI like symptoms in the hands/fingers.

Right, the interesting story was toshiba, who constantly would come buy to pretend to buy TrackPoints... then try to learn enough to "fix thiers" ... even though I had published much of the secrets, others never made copies that were good enough to matter. From the beginning, I encouraged people to use mice for constant pointing, and TrackPoint for mixed typing and pointing... one reduction in stress came with the (won over 4 years) introduction of the wrist wrest in the thinkpads of the 770 time frame... notebooks from most companies before that (like the 750, 755, etc) promoted that the notebook should be the size of an A4 piece of paper and that moving the keyboard towards the display was somehow evil... (even though apple had wrist wrests)... consider using buttons from one hand for buttons and the other for pointing , it helps.

Have you turned up the TrackPoint sensitivity? The default settings are too slow and you have to push it too hard. Note that there are two settings in the Mouse control panel that affect it: the regular mouse sensitivity slider and a separate TrackPoint slider. I keep both of those turned up just a notch or two from the right (most sensitive) and also have "enhance pointer precision" on. With this sensitive response I've never had any RSI or fatigue from using the TrackPoint.

Something else to note here is a long-standing bug in the TrackPoint driver: unless this has been fixed recently, whenever the driver is updated it loses the TrackPoint-specific sensitivity setting. If you ever find the TrackPoint responding more slowly that it should after an update, double-check that setting.

It seems to be a "business" thing, almost all the non-ultrabook laptops I see at work (typically the Precision, Elitebook etc) have a Trackpoint variant. My aging Acer Travelmate has one, but unfortunately it has no middle-button, so scrolling is impossible!

Exactly. You have to look for every specific models at Dell or HP to find them, and they are only in their corporate ranges.

They do different caps, I had similar issues but found the cup shaped one was way better, as your finger fits into the cup slight you have to apply way less downwards force alongside lateral force.

They aren't expensive I think I paid 10 pounds for 8 or something on ebay years ago, they last forever.

the cup shaped one was first developed for a a thumb based handle we made for flight traffic controllers. In those days (1991) we thought a cup in a keyboard would be too big. Actually the new placement bellow not between the g and h key (long before it was a product) made the space for it... but we were to timid for the big style tops for years. the first ones were a chloroniated butyl that replace the awful protoypes that were slippery santoprene%$&$#,,,, but the very sticky butyl (that saved the product from sure death) were actually formulated by my father as the last consulting gig of his life... unfortunately they absorbed oil over a few months from fingers ... I tried everything and the bumpy one is nylon trying to mimic the amazingly gripy fish skin we found in Japan... the larger cup and domes of today are better still!

The cup ones last basically forever, the dotted one lasts not quite as long, and the fuzzy dome wears out in about 3 weeks.

I always thought there should be an aftermarket for designer Trackpoint caps, like Pink Hello Kitty Caps, or Black Spikey Hipster Caps, or Fleshy Famous Porn Star Caps.

I wonder if 3D printers can render the special kind of rubber that Ted's father designed for the trackpad tops?

I remember seeing purple ones at one point, and I don't think any manufacturer used that color as standard, so it must have been an option at some point.

The other vendors' implementations leave much to be desired. Dell and HP have no middle button on the mouse (at least on the models I've used), which makes scrolling a pain.

The middle button was added to placate my obsession with a second pointing device. We showed that you could use the middle button to accomplish what all my two TrackPoint prototypes did... they went for it... but ... i am sorry to say ... the scrolling consistency and control somehow (still) gets hijacked by Windows in some ways ... it should be revisited.

Dell have a middle mouse button, but their pointing stick is far less accurate.

Ah, just looked it up. Some models have it and some don't. I never paid too much attention to them because their small laptops (I prefer the X-series Thinkpads) don't have a pointing stick at all.

yes, I don't know why our friends at Lenovo took it out of their lower priced models and , too, please pester Lenovo, there is still so many ways the TrackPoint can be improved, it is worth the small development effort it would take!

Thanks for coming to HN to speak about this! I think I will probably write a letter to Lenovo regarding the TrackPoint (I've always found that real letters do worlds more than emails).

I'm curious, have you tried any of the Ultranav desktop keyboards with TrackPoints? I'd love to have one on my desktop, but I'm not sure if they work as well as the ones on Thinkpads.

I used a Thinkpad with trackpoint for a couple of years in the late 1990s and found the same thing. Very quick and easy to use, but I never quite found a way to use it that wasn't at least slightly uncomfortable. The main thing I remember was the unpleasant sensation of fingertip moving separately from nail - I have the same problem pushing my fingertips along sticky or grippy surfaces - so I was in the habit of pressing quite hard, to ensure they moved as one. And that proved quite stressful on my fingers.

Eventually the rubber nubbin wore away (probably not unrelated...) and that made it even worse.

These days I've been pretty happy with the Macbook Pro touchpad. Not to all tastes, but I found it easy to get used to, and it requires only a light touch. Pretty much every other touchpad I've used has been pretty crappy, though...

As a longtime Thinkpad user, the MacBook's touchpad is the first one that I've actively liked as opposed to merely tolerated. I almost never bother to use a mouse with my laptop as a result and even have a separate touchpad (in addition to a mouse) for my desktop system.

Toshiba also has one in their Portege R and Z series notebooks.

Also, brilliant for pixel accurate graphics editing. I miss my Thinkpad, and I'll probably go back to them for my next machine.

As much as I love my Surface Pro 2, the Typecover keyboard has the worst touchpad I've ever used. Yes, I'm judging an otherwise brilliant machine by one fault with an optional extra, but it's a pretty big fault, and a recommended extra.

I'm a recently converted, multi-decade, trackpoing evangelist as well. I loved it on my Dell laptop from a decade ago, that I insisted on a ThinkPad when I started my current job. However, that one bit the dust, and modern ThinkPads just aren't up to my modern standards.

I just got a Dell M3800, and, while it doesn't have a trackpoint, it does have one of the finest trackpads I've ever used. Almost as good as a Mac trackpad, and just as good as my Logitech T650.

I use it almost exclusively now, and, after a few weeks to get acclimated, I'm just as productive with it. The proximity to the keyboard is perfect for me. I recommend giving it a shot, if you ever cannot get your hands on a laptop with a trackpoint.

I use a track point on a Lenovo USB keyboard (UltraNAV). I prefer the touchpad on my rMBP. Way better for scrolling through documents.

The middle button was good for scrolling. Although I see your point, I really can't stand non-thinkpad and non-Macbook touchpad arrangements anymore.

Alas, not being able to scroll with it is what turns me off.

You can scroll with a trackpoint. Hold the middle button.

I am ashamed I didn't assume it's possible. Thank you.

You can buy non-Lenovo laptops with pointing sticks. It's offered on the Toshiba Tecra series, HP Elitebooks (as an option), others.