I wore out three PC trackballs before I finally bought an arcade one. PC trackballs generally use wire-thin roller axes wth rubber rollers and no bearings. They also have tiny little encoder wheels. They're fine for games that require less trackball movement like Centipede and Missile Command, but try one in Marble Madness, World Class Bowling, Atari Football, Golden Tee Golf, etc., and you'll kill it in a big hurry. The trackball itself is also lighter and smaller in a PC tracball, usually.
A Kensington Expert Mouse is a bit better; it has larger metal rollers, although still not as heavy duty as an arcade ball. But they cost as much as a Happ trackball when they're on sale, and more than an Imperial ball.
Also, PC balls are not meant to be mounted in control panels, so you'll have to figure out how to do that cleanly.
Now, the second PC trackball I tried was the EXACT trackball you linked to. It's awful. AWFUL. It barely even turns. The ball is not as big as it looks in the pic; it's a little under 2 inches, and if you try to put a 2-1/4" arcade ball on it it sits too high to touch the rollers, even with the upper shell removed. I had to hack out most of the encoder spokes because it backspins horribly when used in an arcade fashion (arcade trackballs are very low-resolution devices.)
I did, however, rip out its motherboard to hack as my interface to the Happ trackball, so it's not a total loss.
So if you buy it for an interface hack, great, but don't be under any illusions that it's very playable. You will HAVE to remove the upper shell at a minimum because of the horrible friction.
--Chris
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Topic: question about trackball mice (Read 2998 times)
