[RTTY] Keyboard vs Mouse

[David Levine]

I hope Bill doesn't mind that I pulled his 3830 soapbox comment out and
started a thread on it. I was interested what the rest of the group (and we
all know it isn't a shy group!) thought of the subject, specifically because
I just switched methods. The specific comment is "Goal to not use mouse and
only keyboard. I learned to do that and that it was faster and less error
prone.".

For me, and I'm an extremely proficient typist (hopefully no mistakes in
this email to embarrass me!), I find using the mouse more accurate and
faster vs typing on the keyboard. Up until recently, I used both the mouse
and the keyboard though primarily the mouse. After viewing the recent K8UT
videos on ESM, right click = enter & call stacking using N1MM, for RTTY
contesting I'm also 99% mouse now. Thanks to K8UT for those as well as the
contact yesterday.

Maybe right click vs pressing enter provides no speed difference as long as
your hand was already either on the keyboard or mouse but I think mouse wins
everywhere else. I'm not sure how typing a call could ever be quicker vs a
single click on the name. I can't make a typo using the mouse. The only time
I went to the keyboard was if the copy from noise came in missing a space
around a call, name or state or if the operators macro did not have a
leading or trailing space (grrrr!) and extraneous characters were attached.

So I'm interested in why Bill (and thanks also for the contact yesterday)
feels it is less error prone and quicker to use the keyboard as well as what
the rest of the list thinks.

73,
K2DSL - David



On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 6:55 AM, Bill <w9ol at billnjudy.com> wrote:

> W9OL
>
>  <SNIP>
>
> More light snow and freezing rain, requiring attention.
> Goal to have no errors, all qso correct.
> I think I accomplished that.
> Goal to not use mouse and only keyboard.
> I learned to do that and that it was faster and
> less error prone.
>
> Rig Flex5K
> Software N1MM/MMTTY
>
>