Roughly a year ago I switched from using a mouse for everyday use to a tablet. The reason for this? Pains in my wrist. Since then my wrist has never been troubled and it's gotten much stronger. In this article I'd like to try and persuade you why a tablet is better than a mouse for everyday use.

First of all, what is a tablet? I can't really find the words to describe what a tablet is - other than vulgar phrases like "A pen for computer" - so take a look at the picture at the top.

I chose to invest in an A6 (relatively small) Wacom Volito which have now been, unfortunately, discontinued. Now for the 2 reasons why I believe they are better than mice for everyday use.

Reason 1: Unnatural grip

When you grip a mouse, your hand and wrist adopt an unnatural position. This can put strain on your muscles and the constant use of a mouse can cause repetitive strain disorder. On the other hand, using a tablet is much more ergonomic. The position adopted by your hand is much more natural when using a pen type object. To prove my point, go find a pen and bring it to your mouse. Put your hand on the mouse then take it off and allow it to relax. Now try gripping the pen. You should see that grasping the pen took much less effort and is much more comfortable. The use of a pen is much less likely to cause RSD because the shape your hand is in is natural. Look at your relaxed hand and you'll see it's curled slightly, almost like a claw.

Reason 2: Efficiency

I personally believe that using a tablet is much more efficient. Each point on the pad relates to a point on the screen. To get your cursor around the screen is much quicker, than using a mouse, if you place your hand in the bottom left or right corner of the pad and let your fingers do all the work hovering the pen around (Tablets don't act like mice. They act like pen and paper. When the pen is down it's "drawing". When it's just hovering a few millimetres above it's moving the cursor around). Whereas with a mouse, your whole arm is doing a lot of work. Your elbow and wrist allow you to move horizontally  and your shoulder allows you to move up and down the screen. The whole process of moving the mouse requires much more effort than using your fingers.

There are only 2 downsides to tablets in my opinion.

1. Price
   This can be, from my perspective, ignored if you use a computer a lot. For me, the affects on your health are more important than the price. You can get a good tablet for about £40 in good PC stores anyway.
   
2. Gaming
   Tablets are useless for gaming. When you move the cursor in, for example, a shooter game the cross-hair won't move from the centre of the screen, but rather the camera will move to place the area you turned to in the centre of the screen.
   
   A tablet relies on the cursor moving - not the area under it moving. This causes the camera on the game to move uncontrollably as it attempts to follow the cursor to a new part of the screen and place that in the centre (sorry if I didn't explain this very well - it's easier to show you but I don't have any video recording software).
   
   However a tablet does work reasonably well for RTS games as long as you don't turn on the ability to have the camera scroll when the mouse is at the edge of the screen. Personally, I think switching the scrolling to the keyboard helps in these types of games because the shortcut keys are right under your fingers from your movement - but that's just me. For this reason I now own a Razer Krait for gaming.

If you're interested in getting a tablet, I'd recommend a Wacom 100% of the time. You can view their ranges here.

I hope my, fairly long as it turns out, article has achieved it's aim - or at least begun to.