Suggested Price: $59.99 Lowest Price: $45.00 (www.buy.com) Maker: Kensington Website: www.kensington.com

Then I found out about the Turboball. I was delving deeply into other people's business when I suddenly decided to browse the Logitech site over for a new trackball, besides my scroll wheel envy I also had damaged the red ball, I think I'm blaming Half-Life for that. Nothing. Deep sigh. Then for some odd reason my eye drifted over to my girlfriends computer, and spotted her Kensington Mouse-In-A-Box Scroll.

Women are a strange sort of creature. Once, while at a computer show, my girlfriend had, as usual, gotten bored and decided to entertain herself by looking for a mouse with a scroll wheel. Unlike myself, who looked for a name I could trust such as Logitech, or Microsoft, she was picking out which mice she liked by the color of the scroll wheel. Please note that she hated both Logitech and Microsoft mice due to the fact that they had dull gray scroll wheels. Much later I noticed that Kensington made a mouse that had a blue scroll wheel, which matched the power and reset switch on her computer case quite well. I bought it for her, and it was a success, she adored the blue scroll wheeled mouse. This was my first experience with a Kensington product, and it was a pleasant experience.

This is why I went to Kensington's website that day, and I spotted my future trackball, 5 buttons, one scroll wheel, and a big blue ball. They touted something about its productivity; I just wondered how well it would play Quake. I also wondered if the scroll wheel would get any use because of its location.

I got the Turboball as a Christmas gift, so I guess Christmas isn't as bad as I thought. First thoughts, this is one bitch of a product to open. I believe the glue that they used to hold the plastic on is the same stuff used to for the thermal tiles on the space shuttle. Next thought... USB? Then I found the USB to PS/2 Adapter. I franticly ran to my computer and debated turning it off, and then I thought... USB is Hot Swappable, so I plugged it in. Then the Add New Hardware Wizard popped up telling me "USB Human Interface Device." Neat. I popped in the Driver CD included and after a reboot I put it to the test.

Jumping into my favorite level of Q3A I decided to see how well I held up to the bots at "Hardcore." Getting used to the new Trackball took a short amount of time, as I still managed to get a third place finish. Not bad. A second run and I was back where I belong, First Place, though not as high a lead as I was used too, but I was adapting quick. Then I decided to see if Q3A could identify all 5 buttons. The answer is, no. While it can use the buttons, which would be usually called right, left, and the scroll wheel without fault, mouse 4 works, but it was touchy and the 5th wasn't even there. To be expected really.

Back at the desktop I decided to give the Mouseworks v5.30 software a look over, to put it simply, very nice. This software has some very cool options that are good out of Quake. Since my computer doesn't spend 100% of its time playing video games, I found many of the productivity options very helpful. Like setting up keys to slow down the mouse, it comes in very handy when your trying to be exact in Paint Shop Pro, and the other option that lets the mouse move only on an axis comes in handy for making straight lines.

Next up, Homeworld... Things were not good. I was having troubled clicking on ships and when I held down both mouse buttons to scroll in on a ship my computer dropped to the desktop to bring up a menu. Back to Mouseworks, and I found that turning off the mouse chording was not an option you can pick from the menu, at least not obviously. If you pick Keystrokes, you can however give it nothing as an option and then hitting two mouse buttons at the same time does exactly that. Turning the trackball chording speed all the way up to fastest fixed my inability to click on ships. Problems fixed.

Thought if you want the Mouseworks software has profiles you can save, so that in Homeworld the chording does nothing, while in Quake III Arena it actually is a key you assigned for using the Zoom, or in Paintshop Pro it performs Control-C thus undoing what you just messed up. If you need a buttons that type out your e-mail address or hits Control-Alt-Delete, it can be done. I've got mine set up for left click, right click, double click, shift-click, and middle click. I feel like I'm wasting options, but I've never had this many mouse buttons to play with.

So would I suggest getting this Trackball? Depends on if you're used to trackballs, which have numerous advantages over mice. They never run out of mouse pad, they don't need to be cordless because they stay put and the cord doesn't get in the way. Some how they stay cleaner than a mouse, even with my greasy hands, but to answer the question. Yes. I give this thing a 5 of 5. It is ambidextrous, it has a ton of options, the scroll wheel takes a bit of getting used to, but soon I was thumbing away on it. It isn't optical, but it works so well it makes me wonder why the hell my Marble Mouse was. Most importantly, it is initially easier to use than my Marble Mouse, and took less time to break in. It plays games well, and it is productive, not to mention it has a huge blue ball. The word "it" was used over 10 times in this paragraph, which means nothing. Noxious?