I've used them all and it's very personal -- MY ratings
Well, not all the brands, but quite a variety of touchscreens, trackballs, pointer sticks, touchpads, graphics tablets, etc (I don't recall using a light pen, though). I'm not much into joysticks, especially for cursor movement!
Here are my ratings and comments:
Best overall pointing device -- Logitech mice. I've used a fair number of MS mice, too (including plain Intellimouse), but prefer Logitech's shape and performance. Mice are pretty decent in clean rooms, too. (Typing is clean rooms is fun, too -- I can actually sort of touch type if I wear tight gloves).
Best for intricate graphics manipulations -- Wacom graphics tablet; it's a lifesaver sometimes in Photoshop, but I don't like it as a general pointing device.
Trackballs -- best I've felt was a $100 CH industrial model with a huge ball (demo only unfortunately). I've used quite a few, including Logitech and Qtronix, but still much prefer the mouse. Their compact size can be handy, but using them in a clean room (gloves on) leaves a lot to be desired.
Pointer stick / touchpads -- these can really run the range; they can be better than cheesy trackballs (e.g. tiny Zenith laptop trackballs), but never as good as a mouse. On my old TI laptop, I didn't care for the pointer stick. On my old Compaq Armada, the touchpad was pretty good. On the current HP laptop, I prefer the pointer stick over the touchpad. On the Compaq / HP laptops the touch pad / pointer stick was very usable, but not as good as a good trackball or mouse.
Touchscreens -- great for doing "soft buttons" and stuff where you need to trigger actions but not enter a lot of data, e.g. often quite good for industrial equipment. Most work quite well in a clean room environment. Also works quite well with Palm. Using a fingertip they're no good for precise cursor movements.
Voice -- tried it with Warp 4, went back to keyboard and mouse.
Tony
Who was spent way too much time programming in clean rooms
