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Pointing Devices. Glide Point: Finger Navigation. Traveling executive nightmare number 37

 

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While you’re finishing tomorrow’s presentation on you flight home, your notebooks pointer locks in place, and no amount of playing with the trackball frees it. After you open the trackball to clean the actuator wheels, the ball slips out of your fingers and rolls down the aisle. Sud-dently, you’re flying in coach and your ball is riding in first class. Cirque Corp’s Glide Point Portable, an unique nonmechanical pointing device, rules out such airline ball games and lets you sleep easy.

The flat Glide Point Portable (3.4 by 2.7 by 0,5 inches) represents the latest thinking in pointing devices. To control the pointer, just run your finger across or just above the unit’s motion-sensitive surface. Clicking is accomplished by tapping one of the two mechanical buttons at the bottom of the unit or by tapping the Glide Point’s surface. Long, slow movements across the screen may require you to lift and reposition your finger. It takes a few minutes to become familiar with the Glide Point and just a day or so to become truly comfortable.

The Glide Point identifies and tracks the center of your finger by detecting changes in the electrical field above the unit’s surface. There are no moving parts in the unit, so it is unlikely to stick the way most trackballs do. In more than a month of daily use, we had no significant problems.

The units connects to a PS/2 mouse port via a 3-foot cable and can comfortably be used next to the computer, above the computer’s keyboards, or even in your opposite hand. The Glide Point includes a 6-foot extension cable for desktop users.