Thoughts on the Dell M4600 Trackpad? Is it terrible?

Hi *,

So I've decided to get a M4600. I did the normal W520 vs. M4600 vs. 8560w decision process. In truth it was a pretty tough decision. So having bought one I did even more reading. Problem being I've read the M4600 has a Alps touchpad. The last laptop I had with an Alps was an HP Elitebook 8540p and the trackpad was terrible. Laggy, inaccurate and all around maddening. I currently have a Sony Z13 and a MBP which have beautiful trackpads. Both of which are Synaptics.

Please reassure me here!

TiG

 

i felt it is smooth and light touching.

 

being used to the Macbook Pro Trackpads which are quite nice the Dell M4600 feels familiar. For me the W520 would be more difficult to get used to.

 

I have both a M4600 and a Macbook Pro. I didn't think any notebook would ever compare to the Macbook Pro's touchpad. The M4600's touchpad is very similar to the Macbook. Very nice and a big improvement from my M4400, and M4500.

 

Oh good! So, it's really responsive and accurate? I'm using my MBP right now, and I've always considered Alps to be 'the bad trackpad'.

 

well i think there is no way it compares to the mac touchpad. and its not as good as my X201's touchpad either, even though the X201 has a much smaller touchpad.

 

It's actually pretty good, coming from a person whose father's 8540p has Synaptics software that randomly crashes when you use anything other than clicking...This touchpad works normally thank god...

 

Ok. So I received my M4600. So far I find the touchpad acceptable, however it does suffer from the infamous 'Alps skips'. It seems that when the processor spikes that the trackpad can begin to ignore some input. Thus it becomes impossible to, say, make a decent circle. I am not sure exactly what causes this. It could be that Alps doesn't use a dedicated interrupt (showing my age) but somehow Synaptics trackpads seem unaffected by the computer's processing conditions. It's fine, but my Synaptics Z13 and MBP definitely wreck it for accuracy, consistency and feel.