Why are the touchpads on almost all laptops so small?

One of my only complains with my XPS M1530 is that the touchpad is tiny compared with my MacBook Pro so when I was at the store yesterday I made an effort to look at the touchpads on all the laptops and it seems like tiny is pretty much the standard. Why is this? The bigger 15in+ laptops clearly have room for a bigger one. Would bigger touchpads really be that much more expensive to produce? Am I the only one that sees bigger touchpads as advantageous?

 

Hmmm ... why does it matter ? You can change the speed and sensitivity of the touchpad in most laptops ... unless your fingers are like HUGEEE that covered 2/3 of the touchpad lol ....

I think the touchpad m1530 is just fine ...

and ... macbook? .... eww...

 

I am a fairly tiny person so it isn't an issue with huge fingers, I just find it easier to use.

My MacBook Pro is actually one of the older ones. The newer ones even have bigger touchpads I think, but that may just be because they don't have a button anymore since the whole pad is a button.


Another touchpad related question, why are touchpads commonly offset from center to the left? Wouldn't it make sense to make them centered or even offset to the right for the right-handed majority?

 

Notice that it is generally aligned with the space key. Which ease you from miss touching the touchpad when you type. Simple as that.

If it was offset to the right, your right palm will be sitting on top of it and it'll make the mouse cursor sway here and there when you type.

 

Spot on. It prevents your palms, which, unless you have an arm sticking from your chest, is positioned towards the sides of the laptop. If the touchpad weren't aligned to the spacebar, which is the relative midpoint position when a human is typing, your palms would keep on making contacts with the touchpad.

Back on topic, I have no problems with my laptop's touchpad size. Although, aesthetically, it does seem small, considering the size of the laptop. IMO the big Macbook touchpads have no real functional advantages over regular PC touchpads, it's just purely aesthetics.

 

I can't see anything wron with the size of PC touchpads - and my opinion about Macs - run!!!


I believe its mouse acceleration (literal German translation unless I'm mistaken) that will allow you to control the distance travelled by the speed at which you move your fingers.
This means the touchpad could - theoretically be smaller

 

I think touchpads will become bigger over time.

Now Synaptics has full multi gesture support, it makes sense to make it larger.

 

Synaptics supplies the touchpad device to Apple.
Synaptics always had gesture and multi-finger support, I believe they either sold exclusive rights with Apple or worked directly with Apple to develop the technology.

 

One of the reasons why I did not get the M1530 was because its touch pad was tiny compared to the amount of space available.

 

nothing wrong with a small touchpad.
(or is there??)

 

a larger touchpad allows more accuracy.

 

I suppose that's debateable depending on user patterns.

Also - my fingertip starts to hurt if I use a touchpad for too long - a larger one would make this worse.

 

Hmmm to be honest tho

I prefer smaller touchpad, since i have a pair of really big hand.
So often when i was typing, i tend to accidentally tap the touchpad and lost the cursor focus. which is very annoying that i have to re align and re focus the cursor.

and yes i know i can disable tapping on the touchpad already done that hahah

 

Same here.

 

Never thought about it like that, I kind of assumed that people that liked smaller pads could just turn the sensitivity up on a large pad so they only used a small portion of it, then people like me that would prefer a bigger one would have it available.