Touchpad Questions

I've preferred trackpoints over trackpads all my life. I'm much faster with trackpoints which has led me to stick to lenovo business laptops.

Since even some business laptops are no longer including trackpoints, I figure I have just get used to touchpads and there's great products that I like alot except for the lack of trackpoint.

It dawns on me- maybe I'm not using the trackpad as fast as I could? You might have to swipe a few times to get your cursor somewhere across the screen. Then you have to lift your finger and tap to click. But macbook users for example seem to use the touchpad much faster than me and what happens on the screen seems alot smoother.

What are some small things you do to use the touchpad fast?

 

Have you played with your sensitivity and acceleration settings yet?


The smoothness issue lies in the different mouse/touchpad APIs Windows and Mac use. In Windows 7 and older all software will suffer from this problem and there's nothing the laptop/touchpad vendor can do about it. (Some software try to hide it with post processing.) If you're on Win 8/10 certain new software may support smooth scrolling/zooming.

"You might have to swipe a few times to get your cursor somewhere across the screen" sound like a simple sensitivity problem.

 

The issue with many trackpads lie with the default sensitivity settings and the construction materials. Some manufacturers are getting much better at this. Dell has done a pretty good job with the latest XPS, glass covered surface and sensitivity seems better. Windows 8 and 10 also offer better native support. There are some pretty horrible touchpads out there still though. The issue often lies with the fact that macs run the same hardware between models for things like the trackpad and it makes it easy to set the thing right in the OS for the trackpad to work flawlessly.