The Orbit makes mouse-movements fun. Makes me want to download IOGraph again.

There is a near-divination-like quality to how the forefinger-middlefinger-trackball operates. I pretend (in my head, I’m not that confident yet to be seen as an odd character at the business-casuals-weekly-standups-type workplace setting) to be dealing with bezier-spirits and calling on them to help deal with filled-to-the-brim layouts and unwieldy InDesign files and curves that change direction without telling you.

I bought this on a whim, having decided to experiment with input devices. My tool-use had gotten boring towards the end of last year. Now every trip to the menu bar feels like a mini-adventure.

It is not as accurate as the Logi Lift. Or perhaps I am not as accurate with it as I am with the Lift, yet. It is predictably inaccurate, though.

I have come to appreciate predictable inaccuracy after living with the Huion-with-its-own-mind for almost a year. The inherent newness of the trackball-led mousing is the only reason this device ‘feels’ inaccurate—is what I think. And that is something one can learn to deal with. It is like knowing how a certain hardware component has its quirks (predictable quirks, even if temperamental) on a device (or a tool or a vehicle) that you use everyday. (Podimol has a heavy clutch that needs a gentle pulling-out every 3/4 presses. That has now become muscle-memory and works well. The front brakes on my FourCorners sqeal once evry two/three rides and needs me to keep the lever half-pressed—like I am autofocusing them—for half-a minute so they stop.) The Orbit needs lasersharp focus working with bezier curves and text editing or anything that involves x-and-y-axes movements at the same time. The general accuracy one needs to work with for such tasks naturally maps to moving the trackball. It is nice how that trains your hand to be sensitive to small movements, too. Unlike the Huion, the Orbit doesn’t randomly ‘jump’ pixels at will especially when you are hyperfocused and making precise small movements. The clicks are not tied to the cursor movement, so the little jerks-on-click are no longer a thing.

The tablet feels actively hostile while the trackball feels like a challenge one needs to (and can) step up to.

The best use-case for the Orbit (or any trackball device, apparently) is with multiple displays and a less-than-ideal desk setup. The mouse doesn’t need to move around for the cursor to move, leaving a lot of area on the desk free for junk-accumulation and ‘research.’ Or just junk accumulation called research. The Orbit covers a lot of screen real estate with simple short flicks of the trackball and scrolls independently with the the scroll wheel. (The scroll wheel isn’t as fancy as the ones on an MXMaster or even the lift—no free-flow-scroll, no ‘weight’ to the scroll for it to ‘feel’ like quality—but works reasonably well with finer control than a typical vertical wheel.)

What I miss are the customisable buttons. Unlike the Lift or the tablets, there are no ‘extra’ buttons to help with ‘reverse/forward’ or ‘sideways-scroll’ or ‘snap-to-grid on/off’ on the Orbit. There is a two-button combo one can activate via the KensingtonWorks software, but that means leaving yet another input-tracker running in the background all the time.

After an unusually long wait and umpteen phone calls, the GAS67 arrived yesterday while I was out paying someone to wash Podimol. The budget-ness shows in its material choices but I say that only because the K2V2 seems slightly better built; not because I know what impeccable aerospace grade plastic on a keyboard flexes like.

In the picture are the BinePad BNK9 with all kinds of switches thrown in and to the right is the well-loved Logi Lift. (You can tell by the oilspill on its side.) I’m never going back to regular mice as long as I can.

The switches are mostly red (Gaterons), peach (Akkos), and black (also Gaterons). it is nice (in a way that surprises me everytime I type on it) and soft and silent. I am making typing mistakes more often though. I think the XDA profile caps are a little too flat to give you any tactile feedback on which row you’re on. (Or I believe that is what is happening.) They look nice though.

The 67 key layout has its problems, too. The K2V2 is 75% and has all the necessary keys for work. The Tilde on the GAS67 here is all the way to the other end on the top right and switching between files isn’t that easy anymore. I believe the multicolour Apple makes up for that inconvenience in style points.

There are no media keys so I’ve Karabiner-ed the PgUp and PgDn keys to work as media buttons (and a Complex Modification to convert them to volume keys on Shift-modifying). It will get better with time, I hope. The function key is still hardware-bound and doesn’t show up in the Karabiner-EventViewer. Will need to figure out something, or use CIY’s keyboard tool on a PC to switch that out to report some other keystroke.

This was my first time assembling a keyboard, so bent a couple of pins on a couple of switches. Most I’ve bent back since. I am guessing that won’t affect stuff in the long run as long as I don’t keep switching them around. (Laughs at own joke.)

I haven’t used this for work work yet. Not sure if going back to blue switches is something I’ll decide on yet. I miss the clickiness of them switches, though. The feedback was nice to have. These are creamy and feel effortless but that maybe why there are more spelling mistakes now than before. Like B said, I don’t usually have buyer’s remorse even in the face of light evidence.

Poppy’s hair has already found its way onto the board. I guess that means she’s accepted into the family now.