I think I'll have another look at that controller KD after reading through some comments on that linked thread, thanks. I'm at the stage where I've memorised a heap of hotkeys and shortcut keys for the cad software I use and the hand movements on the keyboard are beginning to bug me.
What I really love is that I can enter numbers with my head up, watching them input on the screen, backspace if a wrong one entered. Beats look up / look down / look up / look down. I can even type on it, but I only use that for small changes, like a few letters or revving a drawing up.
The synapse software is very good, and now does cloud backup, so you can move to different machines etc without losing settings. Also you can have different profiles so I have some different ones for other cad software and photo editing software.
There is a learning curve, a guy at work gave it a go but didn't make the jump. But for me I was slower for a week, same for a few weeks, then faster ever since.
If you want the low cost version I'd start with the tartarus one unless you want a 2nd scroll wheel. I found the scroll wheel on the nostromo a bit dicky, would have rather the extra button that the tararus has.