Pointing stick

[2] It has been used for business laptops, such as Acer's TravelMate, Dell's Latitude, HP's EliteBook and Lenovo's ThinkPad.

On a QWERTY keyboard, the stick is typically embedded between the G, H and B keys, and the mouse buttons are placed just below the space bar.

This pointing device has also appeared next to screens on compact-sized laptops such as the Toshiba Libretto and Sony VAIO UX.

Pointing sticks typically have a replaceable rubber cap, called a nub, which can be a slightly rough "eraser head" material or another shape.

In the early 1990s, Zenith Data Systems shipped a number of laptop computers equipped with a device called J-Mouse,[4] which essentially used a special keyswitch under the J key to allow the J keycap to be used as a pointing stick.

[5] Usability tests at IBM have shown that it is easier for users to position the pointer with Negative Inertia, and performance is 7.8% better.

If the user releases pressure at this point, the change will be interpreted as an instruction to move the opposite direction.

Additionally, if "press-to-select" is enabled, the software may generate unexpected click events by touching the pointing stick during typing.

During later years, they faced a decline in popularity as most laptop-producing brands switched to touchpads, although as of 2021, some manufacturers like Lenovo still produce laptops with pointing sticks.

The pointing stick is positioned such that the hands do not need to be removed from the home row to manipulate the mouse pointer.

One criticism is that because the pointing stick depends on the user's applying pressure, it can cause hand cramps (although this can be partly solved by setting the sensitivity higher and lifting the finger when the pointer is not being moved).

Pointing stick on a Lenovo ThinkPad
Detail: rear side of a Lenovo ThinkPad pointing stick with the strain gauges . Size: 8 x 8 mm. Out of patent
IBM ThinkPad caps (left-to-right): Soft Dome, Soft Rim, Classic Dome, Eraser Head (discontinued)
A pointing stick on a mid-1990s-era Toshiba laptop. The two buttons below the keyboard act as a computer mouse: the top button is used for left-clicking while the bottom button is used for right-clicking.
A ThinkPad UltraNav featuring both a red pointing stick (top right) and a touchpad (bottom left)
A Dell Latitude E4310 laptop with a pointing stick (upper middle) and a touchpad (bottom). They were commonly featured together on Dell Latitude laptops, beginning in the late 1990s.