Customer Reviews

Smartcat 4BTN USB Black Cirque Glidepoint Technology Touchpad

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I had high hopes for this product but the buttons are noticeably cheap quality and the left click button stopped working after 8 weeks, just stays flat and does not pop back up. I contacted the company filled out the RMA form and have not heard from them for 3 weeks. No one answers the RMA extension or gets back to you. Then they want you to prove you returned it. You can quickly tell the company is Chinese owned as when someone finally answered they said R&D department and could not speak english and just wanted to switch the call without helping. They said to hold and when I got switched to the supposed RMA department I got a message that there was no one there to answer the phone, to leave a message. The company does not know the meaning of customer service and obviously the warranty is not something they take seriously. If the product fails dont count on the mentality that seems to pervade the company to stand behind the product. You are basically taking a gamble. If I had another problem I would not even try to return the product which is what I believe they are counting on. The amount of work, the amount of calls and time wasted makes this a very expensive product. Do yourself and favor and find a reputable company and dont bother with Adesso. Call the RMA department if you have any doubts you wont get anyone on the line. The product quality is substandard and the customer service non existent.

I bought this for use on my Mac desktop and took a chance on how well it would work. I plugged it into a PC as well. Without any special software installed, both machines (XP, MacOS 10.5) supported most of its functions. Tap-dragging, vertical scrolling, the top-right right click tap area work. The two physical buttons on the sides are both perceived as a middle mouse button. But I could not get them to be recognized as separate buttons, and the horizonal scrolling also was not supported (this is not a surprise as most mice act the same way without specific drivers). I did try installing USB overdrive as suggested by Alps, but it did not enable any more functions. But the good news is it is not needed.

As for the device itself, it has a reasonably large touch area and works well. The only complaint might be the quality of the physical buttons is a little disappointing; mostly that they rattle in place and can make a cheap plastic sound when you tap the touchpad hard, though functionally they are fine.

Most people can't stand touchpads, commonly found in laptops. But in reality they only take a few days to master and once you do you'll find them much better for your wrists than a mouse. You also get a lot of desktop real estate back because it does not need to move.

I have used Cirque Glidepoints for at least 10 years. Due to injuries I sustained to my right wrist and hand, I experience pain within 5 minutes of using a conventional mouse. The glidepoint technology has spared me from much of that pain. Over the years, I have purchased 5 glidepoints (I use one at home and one at the office). Considering the amount of wear and tear I put them through (I am on the computer for 8+ hours a day at work and at least 2 hours a day at home), I am quite happy with their durability.

This thing is great. I ditched my mouse and got this about 4 weeks ago. In that time, the finger joint and wrist pain I had been experiencing has disappeared. Ergonomically, mice are bad for you. If you use one occasionally, not a big deal. But especially if you have carpal tunnel or tendonitis, or are developing symptoms, GET RID OF YOUR MOUSE. Personally, I spend a LOT of time on my computer, and this has made a big difference. I wish I had bought one a few years ago. I miss the precision of the mouse, but this thing does surprisingly well. And I definitely don't miss the pain.

The buttons have a medium-light, tactile click to them. I usually use the tapping gestures, though, because it twists my hands into strange positions to be pointing with one finger and clicking with my thumb.

I can't comment on the durability, because I've only had it for a few weeks, but the tapping seems to work fine. Every so often, it clicks when I don't want it to, and sometimes the vertical scroll bar doesn't activate. I think that's common for this technology, though. I'm still very glad I got this.

Also, I wanted to mention that I deliberately picked this one over the model with the four programmable buttons along the left. First, I wanted all the "mousing" area I could get. This was a good choice, because I often hit the edges of the pad. It would be very annoying to have less area. Second, I don't install drivers unless I absolutely have to. This thing runs fine without drivers, and I doubt that those four extra buttons would do anything without extra software. "Keep it simple" is good. The drivers add up, and before you know it, your system has 150 processes running in the background, and it's slowed to a crawl!

This is the third Smartcat touchpad I have purchased. I now have on my two home computers and my work computer. Love them. Black is good so it does not show staining etc. as it gets a great amount of use. Getting the settings in the software to your liking takes a small amount of patience as with any touchpad. Try faster speed of cursor movement etc. In our situation, we do not allow sounds or tapping. Tapping can be annoying if you are hard handed like myself. I'd rather double click a button than double tap the touchpad as I get false "taps" sometimes. I'm used to the left button using my right thumb. Works great and helps my carpal tunnel problems not having to use the action of the mouse. Once in a while, the settings on the touch pad get "lost temporarily" and we believe it to be from static electricity. So once in a while we get no response or the settings seem flubbed. We just properly unplug from usb and plug in again and all is well. We like the 4 button version for cad program use. Enjoy.

I got this type of mouse when I started getting repetitive motion problems in my arm. One of my co-workers had one of these touchpads and raved about it. I've had it on my home machine for about four months and I have formed some definite opinions.

1) It is not good for actions which require simultaneously holding down a button while dragging. The flat design makes this type of action ergonomically difficult. Simple, everyday actions like selecting lines of text to copy, choosing from drop-down boxes, resizing online maps, panning from side to side on photographs, etc., become cumbersome. I have to do these things by placing both my right and left hands on the unit. A finger from my left hand holds down a button while a finger from my right hand drags. If you need to use graphics software like Photoshop, I would suggest you not even consider this type of mouse. You just cannot get the level of fine control you need.

2) Because the mouse is flat and less than a half inch in height, you will need some kind of wrist rest which is pretty tall. My coworker uses a special bean bag to support her wrist.

3) Regarding the tapping motion on the touchpad -- it is really not so much how hard you tap that matters, but to let up quickly. It does require some learning and adjustment. If you share your computer with anyone else who is not as motivated as you are to learn the tapping motion, you will probably really annoy them.

4) Other types of mice have a more diverse list of options for programming mouse buttons than this one. For example, this mouse does not let you assign a button to be the "Back" button in a browser. As you shop for mice, pay special attention to the programmability of buttons and choose the one that offers what's important to YOU.

5) As you are on the internet, your hand will likely hover over the touchpad because you will be poised to click on the next thing. Since it's flat, you cannot really rest your hand on it as you would a conventional mouse. So your hand has to remain dangling in the air, even if your wrist is supported. If your hand droops and you brush against the mouse ever so slightly, you will risk accidently clicking on something you didn't intend.

If you are still intent on trying out this kind of mouse, I strongly suggest you borrow a friend's for a couple of weeks, or buy one from a store that has an excellent return policy. Good luck.

I couldn't disagree more with the other reviewers' assessments of the quality of build for the Cirque Smart Cat. I purchased two of these in the serial/PS2 version several years ago (for work and home) and they functioned perfectly for many years. I bought two more with the USB interface (to replace the older versions) and they too work perfectly. The doubletap feature works perfectly, as does the click and drag. I rarely use the buttons, but when needed they work smoothly and each can be independently programmed for left, center or right buttons. The Smart Cat is very robust - I've never had a single hardware failure in something like twenty years of combined use (four Smart Cats in use for 5 plus years each). The buttons have a tactile feel to them like the high quality $100 IBM keyboards from the 80s & 90s. The included software gives the user extensive control over mapping the buttons, double tap and tap & drag speed, and enables horizontal scroll. Vertical scroll is much, much faster and more precise than a mouse (I'm comparing to the Logitech LX7 - an excellent mouse). Resolution is indirectly programmable since it is directly affected by the pointer speed and acceleration settings and can be made as precise as any mouse. Comfort is extraordinary, no more carpal tunnel syndrome and muscle cramps. Each mouse comes with a wrist rest which is perfectly designed to rest the heel of your hand so there is no need to "hang" your hand as one reviewer wrote. I'm thinking the other users simply didn't install the Smart Cat driver or didn't take just a minute to make the settings. In any event, I'll never go back to a conventional mouse, but I do keep one handy for the few whiney lazy-minded people who occasionally use my computers.

The product works as advertised, but, at least for me, it is even worse for wrist and hand issues than a conventional mouse. With a mouse, it is possible to rest your hand lightly on the mouse. With this touch pad, it is necessary to keep your hand suspended, since touching the pad (obviously) acts as a click. By adjusting the mouse settings in Windows, the degree of needed wrist action to use a mouse can be reduced to little more than with this touch pad. In addition, like touch pads that I have used on laptops, it can be a little inconsistent--it seems like sometimes you have to whack it to get a response while other times just getting near it causes something to happen. As noted in other reviews, the buttons feel cheap.

Easy to install and easy to program. Works on both XP and Win 7 systems. Much more comfortable for me to use than my ergo-mouse.

30 years of mousing has ruined both hands. Pain every time I touch the mouse. This Touchpad lets me use the Desktop computer pain free. It's so good that I'm ordering a second one so as to have a larger touchpad surface on the laptop.