 |
 |
Pierre, I have similar problems using a mouse. In fact I have several "dead mice" that went crashing across the room when my arm or hand would suddenly jerk. My solution to that problem was to buy a keyboard with a built-in glidepad. The keyboard has a port for attaching a mouse if you want to use one also. As far as control is concerned, when I get too shakey I use the keypad mouse which can be loaded from windows 95. You activate it using a certain combination of key presses, I don;t remember them, though, because my keyboard also has a special key just for activating that feature. The keyboard is also ergonomically designed and I find it a lot easier to use that a straight keyboard because the curve of the keyboard fits the position of my "frozen" hands when my meds are off. My keyboard is the LiteOn Model SK6000 with a street price of about $60. But my biggest help is speach recognition software. I have two programs: Voice Assistant by Creative Labs and Naturally Speaking by Dragon Systems. Voice Assistant controls the pull-down menu of any windows program and costs about $60. Its two limitations are that it will only go down one level (i.e. those commands which appear after clicking on a main menu button) and although you can use it with any windows program you are limited to only seven programs at one time. There has been a lot of recent postings on Dragon Dictate, Naturally Speaking, and other speech recognition software. My recommendation is to forego the programs that require the user to speak distinctly separated words They are okay for doing less than a page, and if your meds are on, but are frustrating to use otherwise. With Naturally Speaking, which uses a continuous speach engine, you don't have to worry about talking too fast and, at least in my case, it adjusts to the difference in voice quality between "on" and "off" contitions. Obviously you pay for this convenience ($300 - $600 as opposed to $70 - $100). Hope this helps you. Bruce 56/9 Sinemet CR & Mirapex