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I've been using trackpads for years on PowerBooks, and I have to confess that I have never been much of a trackpad fan, plugging in a mouse whenever it has been practical to do so. I have always found the PowerBook trackpad frustrating to use, the body English of clicking and dragging awkward, and the anomalous response to moist fingers maddeningly frustrating at times. However, over the past six months or so I have been battling a severe attack of polyneuritis -- an inflammation of the nerves whose cause in my case has eluded precise diagnosis; auto immune or allergy problems are suspected. This is not repetitive stress injury per se, as it affects me to varying degrees all over my body, but it certainly is aggravated by repetitive stress, especially small motor movements like typing and mouse clicking. My increasing difficulty in using a conventional mouse has inspired me by necessity to investigate alternatives, and an especially good one that I've run across is the Cirque Easy Cat USB Touchpad. Theoretically, trackpads are ergonomically superior to other pointing devices because little or no movement is needed from the shoulder, arm, wrist or hand. 
I think that one of my of objections to PowerBook trackpads is their central and too-close physical positioning, which necessitates bad ergonomics. The Easy Cat, by contrast, can be positioned almost anywhere within reach of its luxuriously long USB cord. (As an aside, what is it with Apple and their absurdly short mouse cords? In my opinion, mouse and keyboard cables can never be too long -- within reason). Because it is so small and light, you could mount the Easy Cat on an angled plane for more relaxed wrist positioning, or even hold it in one hand and point and click with the other, use it in bed, or on the floor. The long cord and two buttons also make it easy to alternate hands in order to spread the stress. The pad surface itself is about one-third larger than the trackpad on my WallStreet PowerBook, and there are two buttons on the near side of the housing. On Macs, these both work is standard mouse buttons. (More on this in a moment.) These buttons are the thing I like least about the Easy Cat, as they are too close to the pad surface for good clicking ergonomics, are a shade stiff for my taste, and seem a bit sloppy in action. Fortunately they only rarely need to be used. The real beauty of the Easy Cat is its precise responsiveness to finger tapping. I never was particularly thrilled with this feature on the standard PowerBook trackpads, but it works extremely well with this unit. The Easy Cat responds to the lightest feather touch for clicking, but still does not "misfire"-- a superb bit of engineering. Nor does this trackpad exhibit the maddening behavior that the PowerBook trackpads do when your fingers are moist or you use it in high humidity -- low-temperature conditions. It does not work as well with damp fingers, but is still usable, unlike the PowerBook units in the same circumstances. To drag, draw, or highlight text, you just double tap rapidly and begin the motion in one smooth movement on the second tap without lifting your finger. (Or hold the left button with your thumb, something I find awkward). The Cirque Easy Cat's "GlideExtend" feature allows you to drag farther than the margin of the pad surface. There is a textured margin on all four sides of the trackpad. If you are dragging something and you get to this textured edge zone, GlideExtend will hold a drag for three seconds while you reposition your finger to complete the operation. To adjust settings such as tracking speed, use the Mouse Control Panel (not the Trackpad Control Panel, even on PowerBooks). The Easy Cat does not ship with any software of its own, and a couple of the trackpad's advanced features supported on Windows PCs are consequently disabled on Mac installations (a result of Apple's prejudice against multi-button mice). However, there is a theoretical workaround. Shareware software called USB Overdrive created by Alessandro Levi Montalcini is recommended (although not supported) by Cirque for users who wish to enable the Easy Cat Trackpad's "wheel mouse" scrolling and right-click submenu access features, (which respectively allow you to scroll through documents or web pages by gliding your finger along the trackpad's right margin). USB Overdrive enables button reprogramming, submenu launching vertical scrolling and more. I decided to check these features of for this review, and downloaded the USB Overdrive software from: http://www.usboverdrive.com The compressed file downloaded quickly and the installation only took a few seconds, but that's when the trouble started. Bad trouble. When I restarted the PowerBook (Extensions Off as it happened, for unrelated reasons), the reboot took ages, and then crashed to a bomb dialog with a System Error Code 41 ("cannot load the Finder"). I tried restarting several times with both Extensions Off and Extensions enabled. In the latter case, I would get a slam to MacsBug midway through the boot process. Presumably my System or Finder had been broken -- something that had never previously happened on this 21 month old PowerBook. The WallStreet booted fine from its System CD, and a scan with Disk First Aid turned up no directory errors or other obvious disk problems. I was glumly anticipating a full System reinstall, but my son, who was home for Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, suggested a quicker fix. The Restore Software CD that came with his Lombard PowerBook has a desk image containing a Mac OS 9 System, Finder, and several other System resource files that can be dragged to the hard drive, rather than jumping through all the hoops of running the installer. This we did, then threw away the USB Overdrive Control Panel and two extensions, rebooted, and everything was working fine again. We decided that we had to try reinstalling USB Overdrive to ensure that it was really the culprit. When we did this and rebooted, the exact same symptoms manifested -- an Error Code 41 with Extensions Off, and a crash to the debugger with them enabled. When we disabled the USB Overdrive components, the PowerBook booted normally again. At least the second time the System did not get corrupted. At that point, I decided I could get along quite happily without the trackpad's advanced features. I'm not sure what the exact problem was, but the PowerBook has been its usual stable self since disabling USB Overdrive the second time. I keep a relatively lean System Folder, and by happenstance my Extensions Folder was free of Microsoft extensions during this episode, since I got disgusted and trashed them all a couple of weeks ago after Word 98 (which I rarely use) crashed the PowerBook at a particularly inopportune moment. I have not previously heard of anyone having similar difficulties with USB Overdrive, and I'm not aware of any general problem. Presumably thousands of people use it successfully, as it has been around for a while. I suspect it may be a conflict with one or more of the few third-party extensions that I do use, and since I am not inclined to stop using any of those, going through the painstaking detective work of finding out which one it might be seemed futile. The fact that I am using the Easy Cat with a third-party USB CardBus adapter, rather than built-in USB, may or may not be an issue here as well. I simply don't know. My adapter card is a MacAlly unit that uses Apple's own USB software, and it seems to work perfectly. I hasten to emphasize that this problem has nothing to do with the Cirque Easy Cat itself, which works flawlessly. I love this little trackpad. It is proving a great boon in helping me deal with my health-related computer input problems, and is certainly a more than adequate substitute for a mouse or trackball, although I continue to also have an ADB mouse installed for my left hand with which I alternate. My son, who is a trackpad aficionado and dislikes mice, declares the Cirque Easy Cat Touchpad to be an excellent example of the technology. Coming from someone who almost exclusively uses trackpads, that's high praise. I especially recommend the Cirque Easy Cat to people who struggle with repetitive stress related pain, or with problems like mine. This product's sparkling response to the gentlest of input is a welcome relief. It also may contribute to not developing RSI in the first place, which would be a logical deduction. I'm going to give this product five stars out of five, even though I find the buttons clunky. You rarely need them. System Requirements:
Physical Specifications:
The Cirque Easy Cat Touchpad is also available in four alternate designs with all the Easy Cat features of the standard cool gray Touchpad. • Basic Black
• J.D. Marston Flower Image
• Cirque's Easy Cat Image
• Kinetic Overlay
The standard cool gray Cirque Easy Cat USB Touchpad for Mac or PC sells for $49.95. This product was tested on a Macintosh PowerBook G3 Series/233 MHz/2G/96MB MacOS 9.0 with a MacAlly CardBus to USB adapter. For more information, visit:
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