Non-Apple laptops with a MBP-like touchpad

This is not an "us vs. them" thread, so please, let's not do that. I'm simply curious as to whether there are any other laptops -- save for HP's Envy line, of course -- which have a large trackpad like the MBPs.

Was just thinking of how it's an arguably good idea which just isn't used as often as you'd think. IMO, of course.

 

I would definitely think it's usable and a good idea, and I really do wish that more laptops had the larger trackpad.

 

You could buy a wacom bamboo touch http://www.wacom.com/bamboo/bamboo_pen_touch.php. Does everything a mac touch pad can do.

 

I carry a Microsoft Arc Wireless Mouse with me when I have to use a non-Apple laptop. It amazes me that large trackpads aren't the norm in laptops.

 

the acer aspire 5740 seems to have a large trackpad. The new asus g series also have large trackpads.

 

If you just want Mac touchpad functionaility, any laptop with synaptics touchpad with unlocked driver will work. E.g. my netbook can do everything that a mac can do and more on the touchpad.

 

I think he is just looking for notebooks "which have a large trackpad like the MBPs."

I thought the synaptics drivers only unlocked some things, So you can do 4 finger swiping up/down and left/right? Not that I could do 4 finger swiping on my netbook, the track pad is so small it's the size of 3 fingers. XD

 

It's not just the size that make Apple touch pads superior, it's also the functionality.

Most Synaptics touch pads support two and three finger gestures but the gestures work nowhere near as good as on a Macbook.

I don't know why PC makers are lagging so much behind Apple in this department.

 

Apple probably has patents that they won't license.

You really feel how good gestures are when you go from an Apple laptop to something else.

 

This is definitely true. Although I have the multi-touch and have gotten used to using multi-touch with my touchpad, new users can't use it properly. I really do wish I had a huge touchpad.

 

It probably doesn't catch on because if a lot of people are like me, I use a mouse when I can, and when I can't side and up scroll are adaquate. I've tried using some of the gestures on my MacBook, but out of habbit ill just use keyboard keys and never really though they provide a huge advantage.

 

Not really.
You need some customisation.
I was the guy who discovered that the new Synaptics Touchpad Driver unlocks multi-touch.
It is not a bug, multi-touch was programed into it deliberately to unlock multi-touch on legacy synaptics touchpads.
For the record Version 15.0.9.0 unlocks 2 and 3 finger gesture.
Version 15.0.10 is out and adds chiral rotate although half the time it isn't working.
The funny part is when I created the thread no one seems to be reading it here, when I created it on other forums it got copied off many other sites quickly.
Using the new synaptic driver 2 finger scrolling is very comfortable.
Although 3 finger isn't as comfortable as the touchpad size isn't quite ideal.

 

Apple's trackpad is one of the most useful parts of the notebook!

I love it, sometimes I prefer it over a mouse. The tracking is so accurate and the gestures are so useful.

I cant live without 2 finger scrolling. Everytime I use a friend's PC without the multitouch trackpad and its 2 finger scrolling feels dreadful.

 

Each to his own of course but after owning several Macbooks and PC laptops with Synaptics touch pads my conclusion is Apple's gestures work far better than Synaptics. I've tried all the customization one could possibly try.

Even a simple gesture like two finger scrolling works better. It's always registered in the right way and scrolling is more accurate.
With two finger swipes and three finger gestures the differences become bigger.

And no I am not an Apple fanboy, I don't even own an Apple product. I'm now on a HP DM3 with Alps touch pad. No where near as good as Synaptics or Apple. But still it does the job.

 

I have never seen a touchpad as large as the MB's have.

But for functionality, another option on the Synaptics touchpad is this
http://code.google.com/p/two-finger-scroll/

I have never had much luck with the unlocked drivers, but so far this works well.

not as good as the MBP i have but it works and i find i need an external mouse less.

 

I wish some PC manufacturer would realize that a laptop with...

-a large mac-like trackpad(not necessarily buttonless)
-the dell adamo/vostro v13 style hinge
-a backlit, chiclet PC keyboard
-a matte E2E glass, RGB-led LCD screen

...would sell like ing hotcakes after dropping the optical drive for a bigger battery and a core i5 CPU.

 

Agree. Or given that it's edge-to-edge glass, even glossy would work.

 

If there's one innovation I absolutely love about the Mac trackpads, its the two-finger scrolling and double-clicking. I think that was genius compared to the scrolling strips of notebooks past and present.

I do feel like other notebooks' trackpads are improving now. Not yet at the level of the MacBooks (and I welcome the day that happens, there's enough market for everyone ) in terms of size or functionality, but its been steadily improving.

 

Bettertouchtools + Apple's Multitouch touchpad = WIN

I honestly can't believe I didn't discover Bettertouchtools sooner.

It lets you customize any shortcut command to any gesture you want. You'll basically never have to leave your touchpad ever again.

 

Well I'm not a fan of chick-let keyboards, they feel cheap and are hard to type on. I like Edge to Edge Glass, but not when it makes the screen a mirror. I much prefer matte screens. Even if the aesthetics of edge to edge glass is good, I'd much prefer a more practical screen, where reflections won't detract me. Also why would you need to drop the optical drive? The optical drive is still very important to many users. And there are a lot of i5 PCs with 5-7 hour battery lives, with an optical drive. I think my point is there is no computer that will fit everyone's needs, there's no "one size fits all."

I do love the size of the macbook track-pad, maybe the reason other computer companies don't offer it is because they figure its not a huge selling point of their computers. The only limitation of the current track-pads, at least on mine, is that the top part if very hard to click, while the bottom is easy.

 

Lol, people use trackpads over mice when working?

I thought it was a no brainer to have a mouse when working, I can count the number of times I've used my trackpad on one hand.

 

when trackpads first came out, and most trackpads still made.. thats very true. After getting used to Apples trackpads, they are so fantastic, I much prefer using them over a mouse or trackball.

 

Depends on the task. The mouse is more accurate but requires more effort and more equipment.

For simple stuff like web browsing, a really good trackpad works really well, possibly better than a mouse, just because the mouse is overkill. It's trying to get across the city in a jet instead of a car. The jet rocks, but you are just trying to get around town.

For games, nothing beats a mouse. for detail work, mice or wacom tablets are really good.

 

agree 100%, now that I have middle click functionality, I see no reason to even pack a mouse with me anymore. These track pads are amazing and so easy to work with. I find now that a mouse hinders me more than the track pad. My hands have less space now to travel between the pointing device and keyboard.

 

Have to agree. If there is a Windows machine with a touchpad 1/2 as good as what you'll find on a MBP, I haven't seen it.

I've got a synaptics pad (w/ latest driver) on my work machine. It supports swipe gestures, rotate, pinch to zoom, and the ever popular 2-finger scroll.

It works decently. But the pad on my MBP does those things much, much better than "decently." And the uni MBPs are better still. I'm not an Apple fanboy, but I'll give full credit where it's due. And here . . . it's due.

 

Has Apple patented the glass trackpad on its notebooks? If so, that may explain why other manufacturers haven't used it yet.

 

Actually I don't see the glass as a huge benefit. The trackpad on the MBA, when that did not have glass, worked just as well for me.

It even worked a little better sometimes because the glass was sometimes not completely smooth when my finger was dry. On the MBA I never had that problem.

 

I don't know exactly what it is that makes Apple's trackpad the best. I doubt it's just the size although that certainly helps. The material they use, lack of physical buttons (I've always relied on tapping even on PCs), or the software side of it, making its movements correlate so accurately to mine, not to mention the gestures (two-finger scrolling was just superbly done) all help make it be a very natural extension of your hand/fingers.

I have a $100 Logitech mouse that I love and I use it heavily with my other laptops but I never use it with my MBP, I actually prefer the trackpad (The MBP is the first notebook I've owned where I no longer carry a mouse with me). But when I'm using my (work-provided) Vaio Z I always use the Logitech, the trackpad on that sucks in comparison. Frankly, it’s discouraging; if Sony couldn't put a good trackpad on their $2500 flagship notebook, what chance do the other OEMs have? It certainly doesn’t bode well. Which makes me think it's more than just the size of the pad that's at play here.

 

The single biggest thing, for me, is latency. It's practically non-existent on MBP touchpads. On my synaptics touchpad, there's always a slight delay -- I can almost imagine the driver thinking "oh crap, two parallel pressure points moving downward....what's that supposed to do, again?"

Also, Apple has taken ergonomics into account when designing gestures. If the machine is close to you, the natural position of your hand will be at (about) a 45 degree angle to the touchpad. If you want to use 2-finger scroll, the most comfortable position will be for your index and middle fingers to be at a 45 degree angle as well.

WHY, then, did the first synaptics driver require your finger "touches" to be parallel on the pad? That's ridiculously unnatural. It's better in the latest drivers, but you can tell they're going down a road where they're making incremental improvements to poor quality rather than starting anew and getting it right.

That's why I kept the old MBP rather than sell it. When I'm away from a desk, and I'm not crunching numbers, it's still a pleasure to use.

 

Mouse is overkill? ... For crying out loud have you no idea what the word overkill means?

A mouse is simply a pointing device. Your palm rests on it and you move it ever so slightly to move the cursor as you desire.

A trackpad requires more effort believe it or not.

Vertical scrolling: Scrollwheel beats 1 finger scrolling, 2 finger scrolling, heck even circular scrolling ... I mean Work = Force x Distance ... How far do you think your finger moves on a scrollwheel? That's right ... it barely does.
Now I know you're about to say "Hold on! What about long webpages???" ... Well just click the damn wheel and slightly move the mouse in the position you want the page to scroll, it's not a continuous motion you just do it once, and you keep scrolling.

Horizontal scrolling: Tilt your scrollwheel left or right and the page moves, you don't even have to lift your finger, just apply some pressure ... Trackpads however, want you to drag your finger across the pad, lift said finger and then rinse and repeat.

Zooming: K I'll admit, trackpads have this one. Although holding CTRL while vertically scrolling is a pretty ergonomic mouse solution.

Lastly, it takes more effort to move your finger across the trackpad than your palm, resting on the mouse, across a surface.

I know you guys love your MBPs but please don't confuse aesthetics with ergonomics. I'll admit some of it is due to preference, but for the most part the work done by these motions can be physically calculated.

 

My MacBook Pro is the only laptop that I like to use in an easy chair for work and that's because of the trackpad. The trackpad on my Dell XPS M1330 is an absolute joke. It's small and some of the precious space is used up but the scroll lines which I can't even use because my fingers are too big (the lines are so close to the edges that I can't get the middle of my finger on the lines). There is no reason as to why the M1330 couldn't have a bigger trackpad. It is moderately thicker than the MacBook Pro. I think that it's just a cost choice to put in the absolutely cheapest thing in there.

 

effort? moving my whole arm around pushing a mouse around on a pad is less work than moving a few fingers?

and what does the "work" matter? talking about such small amount, whats the difference in 0.0005 and 0.0003 ??

 

Events of stuff said in thread:

People claim trackpad is more convenient.
I dispute aforesaid claims
You attempt to tell me I'm being particular.

Fact of the matter is it requires more effort to use a trackpad, so there's no need to worship the damn thing.

 

You just haven't met the right trackpad yet.

 

The apple trackpad is pretty nice but one thing i have noticed is that i need to push it a bit harder in order the clicks. Are you guys having to do this?

 

I find the buttons easier to push on my MBP but I have a previous generation version. I don't know about the whole-trackpad click. The older version is definitely easier than my Compaq Presario r3000z (which I just tried out). I think that it's easier than my M1330 too. The buttons on the M1330 are ridiculously small.

 

I find it's easier to actually click on the bottom of the trackpad and gets harder as you move up the track pad. I don't usually use the click much though. I prefer to use the tap functionality.

 

thats not a fact... it doesn't require more effort to use a trackpad... i tried to explain that your claims are wrong, but it doesn't matter...

 

I agree, tap to click works much better.

The 'buttons' on the track pad don't work that well imo.

 

seconded, I always found and still do find the " buttons " annoying

 

How do you use tap?

 

You can enable it in the track pad settings.

One finger tap is a left click, two finger tap is a right click.

 

The reason apple implemented the click touchpad is that tap does not work when installing os x or windows. I think that the tap option forms part of multitouch abilities and needs drivers for it to be enabled.

 

It's strange though that the tap to click functionality isn't enabled by default. I showed one of my friends how to. She had no idea it existed.

 

Agreed. I thought that was just bizarre to not allow tapping out of the box.

 

people don't know about tapping? doesn't every single tochpad in existence have it?(i didn't realize some touchpads don't have it)


what i'm REALLY waiting for is the touchpad that can tell the difference between my digits.

for instance, when i'm just scrolling down a page, i would prefer to keep my fingers on the home row and have the trackpad realize that my left thumb on the trackpad is meant to SCROLL the page, as opposed to moving the cursor(which is what should happen when i'm using my index fingers)

 

I thought the same thing. The new trackpads don't have 3- and 4-finger gestures enabled by default, either, which is mind-boggling. Four-finger swipe down to bring up Expose is hands down the best feature of the trackpad/OS X combo in my opinion.

First of all, the point of the thread was not to compare trackpads to mice but to compare Apple trackpads to PC trackpads. Some people just happened to mention that the Apple trackpads are so great that they often don't even use a mouse, and that's true for a lot of people. The hardware and software of Apple trackpads in OS X is nearly perfect. Yes, mice can do vertical scrolling very well, and zoom isn't that big of a deal, and clicking can sometimes be easier. Plus, a lot of good mice (but not all) have back and forward buttons which is even easier in a browser. But not all mice (including my very good Logitech MX518) allow horizontal scrolling by tilting the wheel... all MacBook trackpads support two-finger horizontal scrolling. Also, rotating pictures or documents using two-fingers is less work than using a mouse to find the rotate buttons or menu functions. And how to I access Expose with a mouse? The only option would be to use a hot-corner, which, quite frankly, sucks, and can be easily triggered by mistake. On a trackpad, I just swipe, and boom... there's all my active apps.

Secondly, a mouse isn't always convenient, or even an option. How am I supposed to use a mouse sitting in my recliner with my laptop in... wait for it... my lap? How about when it's sitting on an airplane's tray table that's just big enough for the laptop itself? Or a desk at school with the same problem? And is packing my laptop AND my mouse less work than just packing my laptop? I think not.

The discussion was about trackpads, and the fact of the matter is that Apple trackpads are pretty universally considered far and away better than their PC counterparts. The first time you use one, you think "was my trackpad before messed up, because it was nothing like this." Then you find out that, no, your trackpad was not messed up, it just wasn't that good, just like all other PC trackpads. They're too small, non-functional, and just incredibly twitchy and erratic in a way that Apple's trackpads (under OS X anyway) just aren't. Other companies need to step up their game, because for most people, the trackpad is the laptop's number one input, and they're just woefully inadequate to anyone that's used an Apple trackpad.

 

tee-hee.

the logitech performance mouse mx has a customizable thumb-button that works GREAT for this. i use it in windows with switcher to get expose.

 

Well, my Logitech MX518 also has this. But my old Logitech LX7 doesn't, which was my point. Not every mouse has extra buttons. In fact, most don't. Just like, as I said, my MX518 doesn't have a tilt scroll wheel, but my LX7 does.

 

Apple touchpad is just much better than PC touchpad. I haven't seen one that had as good a touchpad. After I ditched my MacBook Air I got a Asus netbook with supposed "multitouch". It was no where as good. Sure it did scroll etc but the degree of smoothness was just not there. Also the texture of the touchpad was overly sticky. Right now I am using a Dell Adamo and the texture of the touchpad is nice, but the multitouch is still lacking. I can live with it but the touchpad on my MBP is much much better. The best touchpad IMO is the older pre-Unibody 4.1's trackpad.