I was torn between the SmartNav and a foot pedal for hands-free mousing. The foot pedal I researched has bad reviews, in terms of the hardware's durability and the usability (difficult to do anything quickly). I thought I might have issues with the SmartNav but you really do get used to it.
At first, I had difficulty with aiming and had to use all the bells and whistles - gravity, precision mode, key activated, slow speeds. In fact, the first day was somewhat disheartening. I had trouble clicking on anything because of the miniscule movements of my head. So I solved my problem by enabling Key Activated with click on release. I used a foot pedal (I went with the stealthswitch2) as my key. This went way better.
A few weeks in, my skill has improved considerably. I can easily hit tiny targets without needing a lot of the options available. I did not experience neck pain, even at the beginning. Though I am very careful - I use Workrave and take breaks, and stretch my neck regularly. I have the speed up where I get across a 24" monitor with about an inch of neck turning. Just this weekend, I re-played through Portal and it went well
Here is my current setup:
- Instead of Key activated, I use Pause. This way I do not have to hold down the pedal when I want to move, but can still pause the cursor when I need to move my head or keep the mouse stationary while reading/etc.
- I am using Relative mode, not absolute.
- I am using a combination of a free dwell clicker with foot pedals. For those who, like me, figured they can use just foot pedals, you might soon realize that it's annoying and tiring (I have to click a LOT at work).
- I no longer need Gravity. It slows me down more than anything now.
- I am using a series of foot pedals. I got StealthSwitch because they are FULLY customizable. My main ones are left click and Pause.
- I am using Dragon for voice commands, though I no longer use it for opening/closing/anything mouse can do.
For surfing, I have a series of Autohotkey macros. For instance, I will associate one of the foot pedals to numpad4, and then my hotkey script will make numpad4 = rightclick+t. So my footpedal tap opens a link in a new tab in one hit.
For gaming, I use a gamepad with JoyToKey. I still have motor control, but need to game without wrist or finger movements. I associate the left analog to WASD and move it with my forearm, and then associate the other analog to other functions as required, and move that with my right forearm. For portal, movement was left analog, right analog was crouch, jump, red portal, and Use. Aiming with smartnav. Foot pedals for blue portal and pause. Bam.
So for anyone who is on the fence, I would say go for it. There are options and settings here for anyone. It might be frustrating at first but once you find settings that work for you, it is great. I am not as fast as I was with a mouse, but I am adapting, and easily still faster than most people
Kudos to Naturalpoint for getting me back to work and allowing me to game again, and bonus points for being active on the forums.