Dealing with Big Monitors
This is a little one, but it’s made an outsized difference to my work. Some of you are undoubtedly cutting on laptops, but for those sitting in front of a couple of 24″ screens, a common complaint is that so much screen real estate makes it easy to lose track of the mouse cursor.
Though many people don’t seem to be aware of it, you can easily change the cursor size with an OSX control panel. Go to System Preferences > Universal Access > Mouse and Trackpad Tab. You’ll see a Cursor Size slider. Bump it to the right and your cursor will get a whole lot easier to locate. It’ll look a bit more aliased, but that’s a small price to pay for greater usability. (You can do the same thing in Windows with the Mouse Control Panel.)
For more tips like this, check out my book Avid Agility, available in print or for Kindle at Amazon.
Explore posts in the same categories: Apple, Avid, Avid Technical Tips
Splice Now 
September 6, 2011 at 6:50 pm
Good tip, Steve… another good thing to use with multi-monitor set-ups is a small but very system control panel app called “Mouse Locator”…
It lets you keep your cursor normal sized but find it instantly with a green “target” halo around it… very handy.
– Dave L.
September 7, 2011 at 7:52 pm
Interesting. I’ve long used a tablet so my pointer jumps to wherever I “tell” it to go by placing my pen down somewhere. I much prefer the precise location of the tablet over the variable nature of my mouse for many projects and tasks.
~Luke
September 8, 2011 at 8:47 am
I have to say that I finally found an advantage to being left handed.
I use a 5×7 wacom tablet for my left hand. I do the lion’s (pun only mildly intended) share of work with the pen. It’s real estate specific and allows my power hand to be intuitive with all movements around the screens. Then my right hand is free for the mouse and the number pad.
On those rare occasions I’m not on my machine, I’ll have to utilize this cool work around.