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By John Yacono
Building a better mousetrap is admittedly difficult. Building a better mouse is tougher still. Cirque almost hits the bull's-eye with its improved Touchpad 2.
You glide your finger over this palette mouse to position the cursor. With sealed edges and no moving parts, the Touchpad 2 resists many desktop dangers. Its small footprint (4.4 by 4 inches) requires less space than a mousepad, an asset for desk-bound users and a real plus on a plane.
Familiar finger movements remain from prior versions of the Touchpad, but this model also offers improvements. For right mouse tapping, the Touchpad 2 adds color and texture to the palette to keep you from inadvertently straying into the area for right mouse tapping.
Formerly, if you reached the pad's border and had to reposition your finger, you had to regrab the object. With Cirque's GlideExtend enabled, you have just seconds to reposition your finger and continue the drag before the object is released.
You can connect the unit directly to a serial or a PS/2 port with the included adapter. It also comes with a wrist rest, a manual, drivers and control-panel extensions. The control-panel software lets you customize the Touchpad 2's operation. You can adjust cursor sensitivity and speed. You can also set the cursor to jump to default buttons in dialog boxes or respond to light tapping, or you can disable tapping entirely.
Although the Touchpad 2 can run on NT by imitating a Microsoft mouse, its drivers are not NT-compatible. In addition, the mouse speed doesn't go high enough to work well at high resolutions.
To use a touchpad you must learn to position the cursor. Precise positioning, especially at high resolutions, requires adjustments via the control panel. GlidePoint lets you define keys to activate slow-motion cursor control.
With a little tweaking, the Touchpad 2 can be an adequate replacement for a mouse.
--Info File--
Cirque GlidePoint Touchpad 2
Price: $89
Pros: Space saver
Cons: Precision positioning difficult
Platforms: 3x, 95, NT
Cirque Corp.
800-GLIDE75, 801-467-1100
WinMag Box Score 3.0
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