using trackpoint for games

[bruce@objy.com (Bruce Reed)]

The talk of game playing on the 750 brought to mind a problem a friend
had with his system. He got hooked on Xwing and was using the trackpoint
as the "joystick". He's been doing this for about 3 weeks now and after
a few hours of play the other day the thing broke. Not material wise, but
the pointer was stuck in one spot on the screen and couldn't be moved. He 
power cycled the system thinking it would solve the problem, but the reset 
failed in diagnostics with some error code. He researched it and found it 
was telling him the trackpoint was dead. So now his whole system is dead
and he has to send it in for service.

Let this be a warning to those fellow game players out there. I would
recommend the use of an external mouse or joystick (supposedly there are
parallel port interface versions) when playing games that induce adrenalin
rushes. My friend might be a tad bit more aggresive than most folks (I've 
seen him play as I'm the one who hooked him on Xwing), but I don't think the
trackpoint is all that durable and gentle use is recommended. I've heard
of other instances of breakage on 720s, so I plan to be real careful with
mine. (Yes, I'm still waiting - should be any month now :-)

--Bruce