M17x: Horrible touchpad!

So I just received my M17x all decked out with the top parts to replace a crappy Sony laptop.
The laptop is great an VERY fast, I mean after POST it boots in like 30 seconds (Vista64 Ultimate) but there is a great disappointment, really great: the touchpad!! It is a Synaptics Touchpad V7.0

1- Usable area is much smaller then the pad itself (yes, I checked in the pad control panel) as in, even with horizontal scrolling disabled at the bottom there, sides and top there is a strip of 1/4" -+ that does nothing (yes, edge motion is disabled too)

2- When I lift my finger off the pad the cursor snaps back on screen some 2/8" making it quite complicated to hit buttons, make selections, etc...
So, for example, I am moving the cursor to say a window close button, when cursor is over it I lift my finger for the tap but the cursor snaps away from the button back in the direction the cursor came from.

3- Tap zone are a joke, they are physically located nowhere near where you see and set them in the control panel and work badly, going from needing a light tap to a strong one to get it working and that happens 1 on every 5 taps only.

4- Scrolling is horrible, acceleration is disabled, but on a long page it will go ok and then suddenly scroll like 20 pages at the time or jump the whole site up and down.

5- Tap lag, when I tap, anywhere there is a few milisec lag , 400 or so, enough to be noticed and bothersome

This is a freaking joke, my old $700 Sony is as precise as can be, this $5800 rig comes with a pad that is literally a joke and should keep people from buying such a laptop until Alienware fixes it, I am actually calling Alienware today and will return the laptop if a good fix is not offered, which is a shame because for the rest it is a smokin rig, but what's the point if I can't use it properly!

 

Just to worn you: You're going to get 30 people on here telling you to "just use a mouse".

I haven't received my All-Powerful yet, but when I do I plan on using the touch pad very frequently. I've heard several bad reviews about the pad, but I'm taking the risk anyway.

Be sure to keep us posted on Alienware's response.

 

I've read someone downloaded different drivers and it worked better. You may need to search back a bit.

 

The m17x we got in for review appeared to have the super laggy feel as well. It is probably one of the worst Synaptics touchpads I have used, which is pretty sad. Chaz has our notebook right now, and I will see if he has any luck with updating the touchpad drivers. At the time we got it in, it looked like it had the latest Synaptics OE drivers.

 

are you using the synaptics drivers? or the built in windows ones?

you do know you can go to control panel and click mouse and adjust all of the settings for tapping and precision right?

 

here: http://rapidshare.com/files/267315860/synaptics_v13.2.6.1.rar

i upped the most current driver released yesterday.. try it and see if that helps

 

"Just to worn you: You're going to get 30 people on here telling you to "just use a mouse". "

Yeah, if you can afford the best mobile computer, why not shell out another +$50 for a high end mouse that will work on practically any surface and offer functionality that no touchpad ever could.

Having said that, I am also disappointed in the touchpads in the latest mid to high end notebooks. there seems to be a backwards trend in sensitivity/functionality when it comes to touchpads.

Maybe the manufacturers think that these big heavy DTR's don't need high end touchpads since they are less likely to be used on laps in mobile situations? Trying to cut corners somewhere for greater profitability?

 

I actually don't mind the pad too much, though I mainly do use a mouse anyways like most of you are saying Only issue I find is that the buttons can be a little stiff.

 

I don't mind the pad so much, but I am not a fan of the rocker style buttons, really annoying. But like most folks, I use a mouse 99.9999% of the time.

 

Agreed the touchpad sucks hard. It is a good thing I kept my Macbook for normal internet browsing. There is no computer on earth that has gotten the touchpad as right as the Aluminum Macbooks. The touchpad is actually my only complain for the M17x though.

@Simtronix agreed the rocker button also tick me off. You have to press the buttons on the very outer edge to click the buttons in. If you click toward the middle you don't get any reaction.

It's sad Alienware couldn't put more than 10cents into the touchpad.

Edit: If anyone figures out how to cure the lag of the touchpad let me know! Using the physical buttons its quick and works fine but trying to click using the pad itself is a waste of bloody time. There has to be 500ms lag on this piece of crap.

Edit2: @Zfactor Will try those newer drivers later when I get off work, but so far I have tested most every driver out there and it still acts like a headless cow stuck in a pit of quicksand.

 

Hmmmm....I've not really noticed any lagging when I use the touchpad. In all fairness, I use the mouse mostly, but only because touchpads in general don't work well for me in either gaming or working with 3D art. But the times I use it, such as browsing, outside of the scrollbar problems, the touchpad on my m17x works fine for me....

 

The problem is that it seems that Synaptics' driver has a very low polling interval. In my tests it seems to be around 25Hz. That's horribly slow and you can feel it. Simply uninstalling the Synaptics driver and using the Windows default driver produces a much smoother mouse. The Windows driver seems to poll around 50Hz, but that is still a far cry from the miserably slow Synaptics driver.

 

I use the built in Windows drivers and have 0 problems, no lag, fully usable surface area, I am happy with my touch pad when I use it.

 

Do the windows default drivers allow for tap zones?

re using a mouse: when the laptop is on my lap and such, a mouse is not practical, I did not buy a laptop to replace a desktop as some seem to do, this is an "on the go" machine for me.

 

no they dont

 

So with the windows drivers it is a lot smoother and scrolling is better but you can't tap to click?

 

no airplaneman, tap zones are something else, you can, with drivers, assign functions to taps in the corners of the pad and for me it is a must.

 

Oh ok. So is the scrolling better with the windows drivers? Do you still get the dedicated horizontal + vertical scroll zones?

 

I do have to add though, beside the piece of cr@p touchpad, the laptop is sooooo sweet, these are my main specs:

Intel Core2 Extreme Quad QX9300 2.53GHz (12MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz 2 x 4096MB
Mouse Pointers,STANDARD
17.0in, WUXGA,LCD,ANW,M17X
SLI Dual 1GB GDDR3 NVIDIA GeForce (NB10E-GTX1)
512GB (256GB x 2) Solid State Drive - RAID 0
Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit Edition) with Service Pack 1

 

Well I just did a windows update and now the touchpad stopped working..I can use it before I log in but after that it doesn't work and the little 'x' is displayed over the icon in the taskbar. Mice work fine..if I uninstall the touchpad from the device manager, how can I install the standard windows driver?

 

Jclaude might stand for jean claude vandamme...the muscles from brussels

 

Yes, you can tap to click.



But seriously WHO does that? It's the FIRST thing I disable on every notebook I've ever used.

 

I usually tap to click..makes one handed use a lot easier.

 

The thing is, its a software issue. So on the bright side, it can be fixed with an simple update from AW...i think

 

Meh, I like it just fine without the Synaptics (sp?) drivers..I uninstalled them today and it's brilliant! I love it now!

 

I use one hand. I use my middle finder to point and my left finger to click. I use my ring finger to do the horizontal scroll.

I hate the tapping with a PASSION. I seriously think that whoever invented it should have been drug out into the street, shot, beaten, tarred, feathered, and then stoned.

 

just saying use the microsoft driver not synaptics

 

I can see you feel a lot stronger on this subject than I do haha. You can have this win..but I'll be back!

 

The touch pad worked fine out of the box for me, although the default sensitivity was a little low for my liking, so I just turned it up.

I started messing around with the touch pad for a while, and found some interesting features of the scroll zones. If you quickly jerk your finger, it will automatically go to the top, bottom, sides of what your viewing. Also, if you start scrolling down, then glide your finger off while still scrolling (Kinda hard to explain over text) it will start auto scrolling until you stop it or it reaches the end of whatever your viewing.