A Quick Presentation Remote Control

I occasionally give presentations from my laptop. When I do I want to move around as I talk.

This trick may save the day if you forget your fancy presentation remote control. Instead use an external mouse as a remote control.

Step 1: Connect Mouse to Laptop

Most laptops will let you connect a mouse to the USB port so that the external mouse will work along with the finger pad. Almost any external mouse will do. The mouse can be wired or wireless and be the roller-ball type or the optical type.

This trick only works if both the mouse and the finger pad can be used simultaneously. (Older mice that use the round PS/2 connector may NOT allow both the finger pad and an external mouse to work simultaneously.)

Comments

[godofal]

if you got some more time to prepare, you could download a key remapper that has mice support, that way you can actually say left button=back, right=forward, or anything else

[bikeframe]

Key remapping can be pretty specific to the presentation software you are using. I use the free scripting language at www.autohotkey.com for a lot of my tool-writing and it would do what you want.

If you have specific keys you want mapped to the left and right mouse buttons, let me know. I will be happy to put the autohotkey script here that would do it for you.

[godofal]

im not interested myself, just had an idea i thought i'd share
thought it might come in handy if for any reason you cant lock the mouse, or need more than 1 button pressed etc

[Shadow13!]

You can do this even if you can't use the mouse and finger pad at the same time or if the computer doesn't have one or it doesn't work.. All you have to do is plug in the mouse and position it then unplug it without moving the mouse. Once it is unplugged then you can modify it and plug it back in and continue.

[bikeframe]

I like that! Great way to deal with a bad pad.

I think there still might be a problem with some older PS/2 mice. They don't like being unplugged with the computer on.

Thanks for the nice addition...

[Shadow13!]

You're welcome and you might be right about the older mice, I haven't used any of them in a while.