Why can't a company make a decent laptop touchpad?

Is it me, or is touchpad keep getting worse and worse? My laptop from three years ago have a better touchpad than say HP DM3's, Toshiba's T135, Asus UL series.

A lot of smart people work for a computer company and yet they can't seem to make a decent touchpad.

 

Maybe you should use a trackball?

 

the glass capacitive touchpad in the Macbook Pros are pretty nice. But obviously it wouldn't make much sense to suggest you switch over to Apple just for their excellent trackpad.

I myself am waiting for the Tom Cruise "Minority Report" glove technology to get here

 

I agree, the MacBook's have the BEST trackpads bar-none. But I have to say that I was plesantly surprised with my Sony's synaptics pad. ALPS touchpads are atrocious, the way HP does them anyway.

 

What exactly is it about the touchpads that you don't like? The texture, the response, the sensitivity? What exactly is it?

I'd say the touchpad on my A300 is nice. It has a rough texture, and my finger just glides across it when using it, it doesn't catch on it or anything. And the response of it is nice as well, and when I'm using it, it doesn't feel weird when I drag my finger across it, unlike my friends Acer Aspire One. The touchpad on his thing feels really "budget" if you know what I mean.

If you really have such a problem with them, then why don't you get a mouse? They're easier to use.

 

I find the trackpad on my E4300 to be just fine.

 

Once you get used to a touchpad, others do feel quite a lot different.
I know in my class, most people have T61's and the touchpads on them are atrocious, very inaccurate compared to my dell, and it is so small it is almost useless. I have used other touchpads like on my friends asus, and it was definitely different. It had those buttons all over it, and I just found it way too decorated to be even used as a touchpad. It was more of a media center control station. I am fond of smooth touchpads, synaptics has been a favorite.
I have used some Apple "glass" touchpads. The best part about them is that they are not made of glass.

K-TRON

 

Take a look at the trackpad in this article.... it's glass, although it might be plexiglass like the display...lol

 

The touchpad on my T500 works just fine, and I like its texture/sensitivity/feel. But the TrackPoint is far superior in most uses

 

the apple uses an etched glass... not the glossy stuff. but it is glass.

 

That is just a bit extreme dont you think?

I called it "glass" because it is another one of Apple's full of ourselves advertisement scams.

The "glass" touchpad is made of a mere thin sheet of plastic, which is atop a gel filled substrate piece. This is why you can push down into the "glass", which is then atop a thin sheet of some kind of mylar or shield, which is then atop the capacitive sensory device.

I had to replace a touchpad on a friends macbook. He left his hot glue gun on and it melted the touchpad. If it were actually made of glass, the surface would be a little damaged, but probably unharmed. Likewise the glue gun melted into the touchpad and completely destroyed it. It is not made of glass

K-TRON

 

It's plexiglass which is an acrylic thermoplastic. It has similiar charastics as glass but isn't, which is why as K-TRON stated that it melted from a hot-glue gun. And to K-TRON I didn't mean for that to be extreme, I was trying to say that's Apple's fine ad team doing their (well paid) job .

 

What exactly do you not like about it? Personally, I've found that Synaptics touchpads are superior in many ways to the cheaper Alps touchpads. I don't think Alps even makes a pad capable of multi-touch at this point.

Anyway, my 1201N has a multi-touch Synaptics pad. It's pretty small (give me a break, the entire netbook is 12" ), but very nice. It's moderately textured, and while I can go across the screen in one motion, I can move pixel by pixel if I need to.

 

Actually they do, it's in the HP DM3 series, but driver software is HORRIBLE.

 

Well, I stand corrected.

But yeah, my old Dell Studio 1535 had an Alps pad, and I remember the software was god awful.

 

interesting! they call it glass. I thought it was aluminum when I first tried one on an 09 MBP. Was your friends macbook a newer mbp unibody? I think they have different materials for the trackpads than the macbooks, from what I noticed at their apple store anyway. Thanks for the info though. I couldn't find anything on the net other than the words "glass". ha

 

I am not mac fluent in terms of naming. It was a 17" looked identical to the one in that video. Obviously not blown into pieces. It had a square touchpad

K-TRON

 

I have no such problems...

Just glitchy software/Drivers for the touch pad, but it works well when it does.
If you keep the factory settings, then yes, it does seem very slow, but i have the speed and sensitivity maxed out, and it works VERY well..

 

There's the problem though. You shouldn't have to max everything out for a touchpad to work well.

 

Lenovo thinkpads in general seem to have better input devices, simply because they're meant for business users. On the consumer section, companies can seemingly get away with travesties such as the DM3. It's downright wrong.

 

Fussy fussy fussy...

Anyways, i use the Trackpoint exclusively on my ThinkPad, most people i know are so used to touchpads that when they need to use a Trackpoint for a ThinkPad that doesn't have a touchpad, they think you jsut need to lightly brush it for it to point when really you more have to control it like a joystick for your finger.

What's wrong with maxing it out? I find if i don't know what settings somethings running at, when i do max it out, it'll feel so sensitive, but then i get used to it. If i set it to it's lowest sensitivity, it feels like a piece of e but then i get used to it.

 

you read that as being fussy?

 

Dell's Latitude D-series is also a business-level line of notebooks. They're currently on the E-series now, but they still use crappy Alps touchpads. Luckily they have the trackpoint/pointing stick similar to the ThinkPads.

 

my Dell precision is supposed to arrive in about a week. It's supposed to have a decent touchpad but we'll see when it gets here. It also has the trackpoint/stick. Some of the people using this workstation laptop with Autodesk tools are using a cool 3d mouse like this one here:

http://www.3dconnexion.com/products/spacepilot-pro.html

now THAT is a pointing device! ha. perhaps a little more than the average user would need however. but interesting

 

Interesting, although Dell has a storied history with ALPS touchpads. Some still give me nightmares.

 

I only buy laptops with those little joysticky things on them. never touched a touchpad for years.. once you get used to THAT you can't get back

 

Where is the little joystick thing on the 2730p? I can't see it in any pictures...

 

Well, i was just making fun of the fact that you sort of talk of etched glass as if it's inferior to glass glass.

 

right-bottom of G

 

nahhh, i like all glass equally, ha... etched, glossy, clear, opaque... the Macs actually have one of the best touchpads, in my opinion, whatever material it is made from.

 

Nice Mouse... lol almost alien... anyways how much did u pay for that kickass M6500 config?