Has anyone noticed that Windows has really crappy default HID drivers?

[apastuszak]

I use 3 different operating systems: MacOS, Windows 10 and Arch Linux.

I primarily use trackballs and occasionally use mice. I recently bought 2 Sanwa Gravi trackballs. They're a modern replacement for the venerable Microsoft Trackball Explorer.

https://www.amazon.com/SANWA-GMAWBTTB138/dp/B09Q8D6XL9

https://www.amazon.com/SANWA-GMATB137/dp/B09Q8GB2S3

I bought a wired and wireless one. On the wireless one, which I took into the office, I was experiencing a lot of stiction, which was driving me nuts. Stiction presents itself when you move the ball on the trackball, but the cursor reacts a few milliseconds later on the screen. This makes it very difficult to do precise movement.

I did not have the same problem with the wired trackball at home. I shelved the trackball and used a mouse for a few weeks. Then I got the bright idea to swap them out. I took the wired one to the office, and left the wireless one at home. The stiction problem re-appeared with the wired trackball. The wireless one at home gave me no stiction issues.

Looking at the setup, at work I had Windows 10, and at home I had a Mac. So, I took the trackball home, and fired up the one Windows PC I have at home. Thinking it might be an issue with some monitoring software they installed at work, I tried both trackballs on the home PC, only to have the same stiction issues I had on my work computer.

So, the next test was Linux. I used both trackballs on a Linux laptop and no stiction issues.

So, what I thought was stiction may just be crappy Windows generic HID drivers with certain models of input devices.

Normally I'd blame the hardware, saying they used crappy parts or there is a firmware issue. But the problem only presents it's on Windows, I have to think it's either the HID driver or just Windows in general.

[Muirium]

Windows uses a different pointer acceleration curve to the Mac. This is immediately noticeable when using a mouse, especially if you're really used to one of them then try the other. I seldom touch Windows so to me it throws the mouse pointer around wildly when set to normal speed, and gets really tacky and irritable when reduced. (I like very fine position control so I always dial the speed down, on mice and trackpads equally.) The same thing may be going on for other pointing devices like your trackballs.