MacOS – Driver software for Kensington Turbo Mouse Pro on 10.7

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My wife has an old Kensington Turbo Mouse Pro (pictured).

Kensington Turbo Mouse Pro

It's built like a tank and refuses to die, and that longevity seems to be causing trouble.

I just upgraded her computer to Lion. The old driver software will not run (I think this is a 32-bit vs 64-bit kext problem). I downloaded the current driver software, and it does not recognize the trackball–my suspicion is that this old trackball is not on that driver's list of recognized devices, but I don't really know.

The thing does nominally work without any custom driver software, but without control over the extra buttons, and with tracking speed that seems too slow.

If there's a way to make Kensington's current driver software work with this thing, I'll try that. If there's third-party software, I'll look into that.

— later —

Spoke with Kensington support. They claim new driver software will be released Oct 28. Will update again then.

Best Answer

Your wife has excellent taste in input devices. I use the same trackball daily, and if I can't also find a solid Lion solution, I'll be heartbroken (not to mention much less productive).

History:

Expert Mouse ProTurbo Mouse Pro

Kensington shipped four models of this type. The Expert and Turbo versions had slightly different coloring, and each came in wired and wireless versions.

  • K64213 Expert Mouse Pro
  • K64214 Turbo Mouse Pro
  • K64245 Expert Mouse Pro Wireless
  • K64240 Turbo Mouse Pro Wireless

The good news:

According to Kensington's drivers page, TrackballWorks™ 1.1 for Mac was released on Oct 19, 2011.

[Note: yes, that's TrackballWorks, not MouseWorks—the latter was last updated in 2009.]

The Installation/Notes file says:

Requirements:
Apple OSX 10.5.6 Leopard
Apple OSX 10.6.x Snow Leopard
Apple OSX 10.7.x Lion

Description: Enables trackball customization: button functions, pointer speed and acceleration, and scrolling speed and direction.

Languages: English

Installation: Save the DMG file to your desktop and double-click on it. Click on the installer package icon when it appears. Follow the on-screen instructions to install the software.

The bad news:

I haven't been able to get it to work, and I'm not the only one.

Kensington support says:

TrackballWorks - Supported Kensington Devices

Which Kensington trackball models are compatible with the software application TrackballWorks?

Kensington TrackballWorks is compatible with SlimBlade TrackBall model K72327, Expert Mouse model K64325, Orbit Trackball w/Scroll Ring model 72337, and Orbit Optical Trackball K64327.

Note that all the supported models have numbers greater than K642nn.

Workarounds?

  1. There are some reports of success with TrackballWorks, so it's worth a try.

  2. There are third-party mouse drivers. Some people have switched over to using USB Overdrive. I'm currently trying out SteerMouse, which makes the trackball work, but only has limited button support.

    Neither focuses on supporting Kensington devices, or trackballs in general, which makes things problematic.

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