Replacing the mouse by a game pad

In trying to alleviate the repetitive strain of hard modern student computer-desk work, I am trying out an alternative setup based on a regular keyboard and a gamepad to replace the regular mouse usage.

After some small efforts to configure the keys I can now do browsing using just the gamepad while the keyboard is only used for charater input. Shortcut keys are all mapped to the gamepad and I must say it's even quite comfortable. The actions requiring large movement are handled by shortcut keys; actions like closing windows, switching between windows or tabs and navigating across pages vertically. Medium distance coordination tasks are handeld with the axis-controllers of the game pad. Really small movements still require using the mouse. An additional writing/tapping pad may be needed for efficient text editing and coding. I will look into in that in the coming weeks.