The first column is the old style menu, the middle one is the ribbon, while the big bad left one is the new “file” menu, if you believe it. I was ashamed to post the old file menu….you would have cried…

So while it might be enjoyable to see movies all day long on a very wide monitor, for those of us who care to do a little work every now and again this new system sucks.

1. I tried a different glove, this time it was a much stiffer one from Thermoskin. They have a couple of interesting gloves for people with RSI and CTS. This helped me a lot for my wrist, but in the meantime the pain got worse in my finger – my index – left and double clicks – being the most affected.

2. I bought a Genius Traveler 525 mouse  – which helped a lot as well because instead of the scroll wheel, it has a "touch wheel" so that you have less strain from zooming in Autocad, for example, and two extra buttons one of which I mapped the double click so I reduced my left-clicks by half. Another big advantage of this mouse is that it is very light – ~68grams, so less strain on the wrist

3. I dreamed (and still am) of proper drivers for the Apple Magic Mouse on a Windows PC. Yes, I know they do exist, but they are far from complete since you cannot have (yet) in Windows a software that does the customized mapping of mouse gestures. My goal would be to achieve lef and right clicks without the (mechanical) clicks, like on a touchpad, so that my finger won’t have any resistance to put up with when it clicks.. It can be done on a Mac, but still waiting for that feature in Windows. In the same product line -touch mice – there’s been another product that has been recently launched (only at the Hannover CeBit so far, not in stores yet) – the Ektouch IS Touch Mouse – I’m keeping an eye on that one as well

4. Last but not least, when I could to the point of an almost impossible click, I turned to a Wacom Intuos 4s tablet. I’ve been using it for a month and a half now and I haven’t touched the mouse since. It takes a while to get used to, but afterwards it does wonders to both the wrist and the fingers. For now (fingers crossed) the pain is almost gone and I can work properly again. This tablet has also a few unique advantages that make it even more useful. It has a “touch” scroll wheel on the side (similar to the Click Wheel on the Ipods) that one can use in conjunction with, for example, the middle button mapped on one of the pen’s buttons to do Autocad or 3dsMax  zoom/pan. It has several buttons on the side of the tablet that are fully customizable by mapping any commands on them. Plus, it has an on screen menu (with sub-menus) that you can pop-up and customize with any commands you wish, saving unecessary clicks and mouse movement. One other thing, with the tablet I managed to work without the above-mentioned glove

5. I’m still using in both Autocad and even more so in 3ds Max the 3d Connexion Space Navigator. It’s an amazing piece of machinery and it’s worth every penny – I could hardly ever go back to Alt+Middle Click for 3d navigation in 3ds Max :)). It still has some limitations in Autocad, namely it loses the current selection when zooming and panning if you’re not inside a command, but it’s a very small and acceptable trade-off for the joy of using it for all the navigation in those softwares. It works in Photoshop as well (not to mention most 2d/3d applications, Google Earth, etc), but for PS I prefer the keyboard shortcuts….

Voila, this is the current state of my fight with RSI and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. I hope it might help other people in the same situation.

If you think that my stories are crazy, please think again :)  – you cannot imagine how much harm the “harmless” keyboard and mouse in front of you can do to you.

So the steps I took during the last couple of years are the following:

1. I got another chair that could be lifted to about 58-60cm. The elbow needs to be at a 90degrees angle when used for the mouse/keyboard and that was the height I needed.

2. got another mouse – the simplest one, with a wheel, a cable connection and no extra buttons. All the wireless models are in my opinion too heavy and that hurts (me at least ;). I’m good at about ~90grams for the mouse. The optic mouse with a cable is even better (the wheel weights some grams).

3. got an IMAK Smartglove – that was VERY helpful – it helps your palm and fingers rest horizontally on the mouse and not curved; I’ve been using it for more than two years now and I cannot touch a mouse without it.

4.got a different mouse – recently, after two years of steady pain, it started increasing again, so I had to look for new ways to improve/stabilize my condition. I looked into all the ergonomic mouses on the market and found out there is a certain category of them that maintain your hand in a more natural position – the handshake one that is. There are a few brands that do these, but in my opinion most of them are overpriced – Evoluent, Zero Tension Mouse, Aerobic Mouse – in the 80-120 $ range. Finally I found one that was fairly priced and bought it – the Wow Pen Joy at about 20 euros. The difference between the vertical and horizontal position of the palm is incredible – you can hardly go back to the classic mouse afterwards – vertical seems natural the instant you put the hand on the mouse.

5. got a 3d mouse/joystick – the idea I had in mind was to try and avoid as much activity for my right hand and fingers (the index hurt the most …well…all those clicks add up) as possible. I’m a huge fan of shortcuts (a little bit more further below), but in the trade I’m in – architecture – many clicks are unavoidable. One of the clicks that hurt the most was Alt+Middle Button (scroll wheel) in 3dsMax in order to orbit in 3d. On the suggestion of my friend Ionut I asked my boss to get me the Space Navigator. It’s an amazing piece of machinery – it can pan, zoom, rotate and tilt with a very small movement of the left hand and it works not only in Max, but in Autocad and Photoshop as well. Therefore I managed to pass to my left hand all of the clicks I had to do on my scroll wheel (Pan in Autocad is a continuous click on the middle button and you use it a lot)

6.mapped some mouse buttons – The Space Navigator has 2 extra buttons that you can map at will, which I did. The Pen Joy had 2 scroll buttons on the side that you pressed with the thumb and I thought of remapping those as well, give the thumb some work. Unfortunately the Pen Joy didn’t have any software included, so I had to find a software for remapping mouse buttons and I did so here .lt’s very good, easy to use and doesn’t take to much memory.

7.did a little bit of DYI in the hope of easing some of the pain from my index. I had to try and put the left click somewhere else…but where? how about a pedal? There are some foot-mice available, but they are very expensive and not worth it at all. The idea is nevertheless interesting and worth trying, at least in part. And that is what I did – I bought a pedal (basic, industrial one), dismanteled an old mouse, and with three small wires I connected the pedal to the switch of the left click in the mouse. The result was impressive – a USB pedal (I managed to put the entire mouse circuits inside it) that does the left click, and that with a 20 euros pedal and an old mouse. I’ll post a picture soon :)

8. used shortcuts and other tricks:

a) I mainly use 3 softwares with their appropiate shortcuts – for 3dsMax – the shorcut guide, for Photoshop – the shortcut guide and for Autocad – the shortcut guide. Of course I don’t use all the shortcuts available, but with a litte bit of discipline you can do a lot of tasks much faster than with the mouse (think of all the km of mouse distance you’re doing every year).

b) Another useful trick I found for 3d Studio Max was this script – autovb – MouseOver Viewport Switcher. What it does is that it automatically switches the active viewport to the viewport the mouse is hovering over. The big advantage is that you don’t have to right/middle click in order to activate the viewport.

c) as I previously posted here , theright-click customizable directory navigation FolderGit. It avoids hundreds and thousands of clicks that get you to that file/folder.

9. on the “to do” list – get a keyboard that has a scrolling wheel on the left side, take more breaks during work and probably do some more investigations – electromyography, electroneurography  and whatever other graphies can be necessary.

As I found out during my own research concerning the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, many of the tips and tricks that can help, temporary or permanently, have been found by people tinkering around their desk or workplace. If you stumble on my article and find it useful, or if you have any other ideas that might be helpful please don’t hesitate to post a comment :)