U36SD touchpad dead area problem

Anyone else have a dead area on the far right of their touchpad? The far right centimeter will not do anything. No click, no scroll, no pointer movement.

Wondered if it was a problem of my touchpad.

 

I have this issue as well. Coming from my old laptop, it's extremely frustrating because I'm used to using the edge of the touchpad to find the scroll zone. Since the dead zone is about the width of a finger, I can't do this at all. I've set the vertical scroll zone to the maximum width to make it easier to use without looking, but this has it's own drawbacks...

The dead zone on my laptop is about 1cm on each side and 0.5cm on the top and bottom. Needless to say, the active area is much smaller than appearances.

Is this a driver issue?

 

Is anyone NOT experiencing this issue with their u36sd? It would be reassuring to know if the touchpad is actually capable of operating in the outer regions.


---Edit---

Here is an image that shows the approximate boundary for my touchpad on the u36sd:

 

it appears your entire finger must be on the pad and not on the seam or touching the palm rest

 

Do you have the same issue as well?

It doesn't seem to have anything to do with touching the palm rest or seam. I can use the touchpad while maintaining contact with both.

 

mine works as I described, as there seems to be an area right at the edge that isn't touch sensitive....as I slide my finger down the pad there is a very thin strip between my finger and the edge.... you can see it if you bring up mood pad... I don't think it is a defect and it doesn't bother me at all...In fact I had never even looked until your query

 

Yes, exactly this. Seems to be rather prevalent...

I do see it as a problem. As I said above, I would like to be able to use the seam as a tactile cue for scrolling. That way I set my scroll region like so:



As it stands, this is roughly how large the touch-sensitive region of the touchpad is:



This is very deceptive marketing if Asus knowingly made it look bigger than it was capable of functioning. Worse than having a smaller touchpad than I thought is having to use this setting for the scroll region:



Despite having the largest setting, I still find myself trying to scroll on the left side of the zone because I can't tell where my finger is. The other problem is accidentally activating the scroll function while trying to move the cursor...

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Asus, help!

 

I'm checking this thread several times per day hoping to find an answer for the problem. While waiting for community insights, I decided to contact Synaptics directly:

As quoted, I will post updates as they become available.

 

It's possible I had different drivers at the time, but when I owned a U36 I had to make a circular motion starting from the "dead zone" on the right side. So as I would moving my finger downwards and clockwise the page would scroll down. Inversely, moving up and counter-clockwise the page would scroll up. I was baffled to as to why a simple up and gesture didn't work. Hope this helps.

 

Do you guys know if the U46 has this same problem? Or is it unique to the U36?

Thanks...

 

The actual touchpad PCB is adhered to the back of the palmrest, under the area we see as "the touchpad" on the surface. (We never touch the TP itself.) Notebook manufacturers spec the TP size for a given model, and Synaptics, Elan, etc., provide it. There are dozens of different sizes, as used in lots of different notebook makes & models.

Here's a touchpad PCB (in another Asus model) as seen from the backside:



Ideally, of course, the touchpad PCB should closely match the size of the designated palmrest area in every model. But sometimes, they just use the same TP from another model that's "pretty close."

From the consistency of the descriptions here, I can't help but wonder if the TP installed in these models has been re-tasked from another notebook model, and doesn't quite fit. That in itself isn't unusual, but if the assemblers didn't center it, you'd get a "dead zone" on one side, just like you've all described.

Whatever the ultimate cause turns out to be, I don't think Synaptics will provide any guidance or resolution. They are an enterprise supplier, and they expect the notebook OEMs to provide support for their products.