Report on BigTrack with regard to Essential Tremor

From the Desktop, selecting My Computer – Control Panel – Mouse, change settings – select Pointer Options tab, and set Pointer Speed slider to minimum position. Click on Apply.

The weight of the BigTrack and the adhesion of the plastic pads ensured that it remained in situ even when considerable force was applied to the ball. With the inertia of the ball, a glancing push from a shaky hand sent the cursor smoothly traversing the monitor screen, from top left to bottom right with just two pushes. The frequency of any tremor transferred to the ball from hand contact was damped by the slow speed of the cursor. This allowed the cursor to be accurately placed into the small tick boxes required for options in Control Panel settings and some web sites: something that takes time and lots of patience with a standard mouse. The left and right click buttons, as with the keys on the BigKeys LX keyboard are hard to miss and tremor has no detrimental effect in their operation.

Whereas the Microtrack Finger Mouse was light and fitted ergonomically into the hand, tremor was transferred from the thumb to the ball, but this was slight compared with a standard mouse. The main drawback occurred when having placed the cursor, to resume typing it was necessary to use the left hand to remove the Handtrack from the right; it was such a good fit.

It is difficult to think of any improvement that can be made to the Rollerball that would be of even more benefit to people with Essential Tremor of the hands.

Cyril Gleeson
National Tremor Foundation
www.tremor.org.uk