My tablet stylus died mid-presentation and the backup was a pen

I was walking through a slide deck for our quarterly IT review in Phoenix when my stylus just stopped responding at slide 6 of 24. I grabbed the closest thing on the podium, a cheap ballpoint pen, and finished the whole demo by tapping the screen with the plastic end, which actually worked better than I expected. Has anyone else had to jury-rig a pointer or input tool in the middle of a meeting, and what did you grab?

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the_gray17d ago

The plastic end of a pen is a classic move, I've done the same thing with a USB cable cap when my finger wouldn't register on a touchscreen. Actually, the trick that saved me once was turning the pen sideways and using the little clip on the cap, it gives you a steadier point for dragging things around. My backup now is a cheap rubber-tipped stylus that lives in my bag, but if you're stuck, a paperclip taped to your finger works too. You just gotta make sure the material is soft enough not to scratch the screen, hard plastic is usually fine, metal is risky. The real kicker is when the pen runs dry too, that's when you start looking at the room for anything with a spring inside.