[andrewas]

Why would anyone with the option choose to play with a tracker ball? Mouse and Keyboard will get you through anything that dosent involve flying, whereas Trackball and keyboard gets you a sore thumb and *low* accuracy scores. (as in I get 5% of my normal hitrate with a trackball - I measured). By preference I use an old style opto-mechanical mouse. Cos a)Im cheap and b)pure optials have an extra 20ms latency on them.

Stick is the way to go in the air (or space) though.

Andrew - a trackball is basically a mouse upside down - you control it by moving the ball with your thumb. Its easy enough to work with, but for games it sucks.