Dell Latitude E6400/6500 Touchpad is Bad, how to make it less bad

Hi,

This is not the newest topic but it's been well described that the Latitude E series' touchpad is crappy. With the launch of Windows 7, I thought that I'd give the new touchpad drivers a try. Still as crappy.

This is the worst touchpad and pointing stick that I can remember using on a laptop. Normally I wouldn't care, but actually having a terrible nav system really stinks more than I thought it would.

Well, my stop-gap solution was to simply remove the Dell touchpad drivers altogether and go native with whatever Windows 7 detected. What an amazing difference! The touchpad is usable now (it doesn't freeze and it tracks much better).

THE DOWNSIDE: no touchpad scrolling and special features. I have compensated with using the up and down arrows to scroll after increasing the keyboard's repeat key rate to the fastest possible setting. Using page up and page down is also acceptable and while it might seem ghetto, it's second nature to me now and actually and back/forward with alt + left arrow, alt + right arrow has always been what I got used to doing.

Just a public service announcement since Dell will not ever fix these drivers. (and yes they are at the very least extremely frustrating and worst case unusable). In any case, just ditch the touchpad drivers altogether and see what you think if the current touchpad drivers leave you frustrated.

 

Although you are not alone in your complaints, I'd like to remark here that I am using Dell's drivers and am quite happy with the touchpad.

 

I cant stand the touchpad-I think its terrible.
Tthe worst part about it is how sensitive it is. The slightest miss-touch will higlight and entire page and cause all sorts of annoyances.

Has anyone figured out how to do the "back page" "forward page"-left/right swipe while using Firefox?

 

I don't think that the drivers are that bad. They've frozen on me probably twice in 6 months, and even with the sensitivity turned all the way up (to lightest touch), it's fine with me. In fact, that's how I use it. You can adjust the sensitivity in the DellTPad application.

The thing that sucks is that it has no advanced gestures. Besides that stupid circular scrolling, you can't do anything. Where are all the cool gestures that Apple has? I mean, this trackpad can't do anything more than my 5 year old Inspiron can.

 

if you tune your settings in the mouse settings, these problems disappear.

for me the latest drivers, with touch check set to minimum, work best.

 

The touchpad on my E6500 is terrible. Thanks for your tip about the drivers, but I doubt that any drivers could really fix this thing - it is just too small and too slick. The touch-point (or what-ever it is called) is really bad too when compared to the Thinkpads I have used.

It's too bad, because the 15" high-res LED screen is great, and the whole thing is reasonable light, so I might have considered buying another if it weren't for the input problems.

Is the touchpad on the Vostro line (in Canada) the same or is it better?

 

i agree, it is a bit on the small side. took a bit of getting used to for me. but i love the texture. i made the mouse more sensitive to compensate for the smaller size

 

I know i'm one of the few, but I like the Latitude because they both a touch pad and a pointing stick but mostly because of the pointing stick. Ever since I got my E6400, I kept thinking I got a bad laptop as the pointing stick is very choppy and just sucks. The touch pad isn't bad but def not good.. I also removed the dell driver and am running on the windows driver and they both still suck..

I miss my old work D410, I'm hoping my co-worker trades me for a D630..

Ken

P.s. Why can't dell give us new gestures like my Asus Mini (EEE pc), with two finger scrolls instead of the outdated side scrolling on the touch pad?

 

I had a D630 at work for a while. Touchpad was poor, IMO. One of the more mediocre ones I have had on a supposed "business" notebook. The M1330 they gave me afterwards actually had a much better touchpad.

 

I agree with the others that this touchpad AND pointing stick are horrible. I debated for months on whether to get an e6400 or a Thinkpad T400. I compared every spec. (I thought). I finally settled in on the E6400 because we are a Dell shop and that back-lite keyboard is really cool.

But I made the assumption that all touch-pad's and point sticks are the same. I was very wrong.

Going from a Thinkpad T42p (almost 5 years old) to the E6400 was a big downgrade. The main problems are the spotty wireless performance and the killer, the touchpad.

I can't work on this thing. Luckily, since I buy the laptops for my company, I will pass this one on to someone else and look into either a T400 or T500 in the coming months.

Even though the Thinkpad keyboard is famous, I actually find the E6400 keyboard better, but that touchpad makes this thing a paper weight.

If there was a better way to change the drivers and make this thing work better, then I would keep it. I'm not going to settle for the "default" drivers that disallow scrolling.