TL;DR: I switched the leads inside my Kensington Orbit Fusion to better fit how I use it without needing software solutions.

My everyday mouse is actually a Razer Basilisk corded. Good balance of price, performance, and features (freewheel scroll toggle is a must!). Turn off the 1337 lighting and it’s even visually inoffensive.

Sometimes though, my wrist would prefer a better angle for a few days, or I need to do some real mousing on the couch or while traveling. That’s when I grab my Kensington Orbit Fusion. I used to have an old-style Orbit with scroll ring, and the ring is by far my preferred scroller on trackballs. Unfortunately, it the older design has no third button, to say nothing of buttons 4 or 5 or adjustable DPI. The Fusion is an obvious “homage” to the Elecoms that have become popular in this niche corner of the market, and while it got some iffy reviews, Kensington’s patent on the scroll ring hasn’t run out yet, so it is the one that had the features I wanted. I also found that it breaks in pretty decently and really isn’t bad at all, though if you are not wedded to the ring and form factor, something else is probably a better choice.

I also realized that if I swapped the left button with “button 4” in software I could use a grip very similar to the OG Orbit design that I liked so much, and with a slightly improved wrist angle as well. However, it was tedious to set it up on every computer and OS I was going to use it on, and for my work PC I didn’t even want to try to figure out if I’m allowed to install the Kensington software, which is bloated AF anyway.

So, I decided to simply commit. I looked up how to get into it and saw that its guts are pretty old school, well labeled and easy to service once you locate and get past the stupid tri-wing screws, but they are not particularly tight so careful use of a flathead worked fine. I was ready to do some soldering, but instead I just gently lifted the retaining tabs on the molex connector and flipped the leads for LB and B4. The duty cycle for something like that is probably in the low 2-digits, but for a one-time change that might someday be flipped back if I pass on the trackball, it should be more than fine. The trackball now meets my needs better than before without resorting to annoying software solutions.