Envy 15 touchpad - hideously awful...

Hi everyone.

I did do a search before anyone asks and couldn't find a thread along the lines of what I was looking for but if I missed it I apologize in advance.

I just got hold of an Envy 15. I was pretty chuffed to begin with because I was expecting a first-gen 15 but got a second-gen 15-1110ea for very little money, boxed with Blu-ray drive!

Anyway my complaint/question is this - have any of you Envy owners (not only the Envy 15 users) found a way around what can only be described as the most god-awful touchpad ever to grace a laptop, let alone a seriously high-end machine?

On my XPS M1530 and M11x, I tend to use my right-hand to operate the touchpad, index finger does the moving and thumb rests on the left-click but the pointer is continually doing it's own thing. Sometimes it's ok but if my thumb resting pressure changes the cursor will glide off or jump to the far sides of the screen or just do little 360s like on a regular single-touch touchpad if you rest two fingers on it. Seriously for such an otherwise well-built machine I cannot believe HP let something so bad out of the factory. My plan was to make this my main machine and finally retire the M1530 which has served me incredibly well and still is (as I write this) for gaming and general use. I'd also level a complaint about the keyboard position on the Envy 15, those shortcut buttons on the left-side really mess up my touch-typing!

If I can't fix this I will just sell the machine on, I mean I got it at a decent price so I should make some money on it even so but I've never had a cutting-edge computer like this before (quad-core, 8GB RAM, HD5830 graphics) and wanted to at least enjoy it a bit.

Any ideas? Is there some firmware update or driver I may be missing?

Thanks!

 

Only place one finger on the touch pad at a time. Learn to tap to click. Instead of trying to place two fingers on it at the same time--that only works if you keep one finger absolutely still and will mess up if your second finger moves at all. Also, you can upgrade your touch pad drivers from HP's website. I love the Envy 15's touch pad. The two finger scroll is fantastic, as well as the size of it, and the texture. The best I've used on a PC. The only one I think is better is the MBP in OSX. It performs equally well as the MBP when in windows in my opinion.

 

I hear your point but it's not a natural way to use a touchpad, just about everyone I know uses a touchpad with their thumb resting on the left-button and their index finger, why did HP think that changing this was acceptable?

Tap-to-click - I did try that for a while but in gaming it doesn't cut it, tap-to-click is slower and adds a bit of latency to the click.

I know there will be people out there who like this touchpad (such as yourself and I'm not criticising) but I think I'm right in saying the majority find it a learning-curve which they may or may not overcome and more importantly shouldn't have to when spending an extraordinary amount of money on a laptop of this calibre.

Maybe I should play with it some more - do the drivers make the behaviour less pronounced? Any other views?

 

It's true that it's kind of ridiculous HP released these notebooks with a learning curve to the touchpad. An optional deadzone would have been greatly apprciated by many people.

However, after getting used to tap-to-click, I really like this touchpad for its nice features (especially after E14 thread updates, but I'm not sure those work on the 15).

ALSO, stop gaming with a touchpad. It really shouldn't be done if you are at all serious about the games you're playing.

 

It's World of Warcraft, which can be played perfectly adequately in PvE and PvP with a touchpad and I have done successfully for years. If it's a hardcore arena session I might use a mouse, but something simple as moving my right hand from the touchpad to the keyboard is quicker than moving my right hand to the keyboard when I want to reposition the camera or click on something direct.

If it was a FPS then yes, of course, it'd be a mouse I'd be using and my right hand would stay on the mouse during the game so the benefit of moving my right hand using a touchpad is negated.

 

I want to say thank you to the OP for posting this information. I'm contemplating the HP Envy 14 and the trackpad gives me a lot of pause. I like using it the same way.

 

Perhaps because I am coming from using the MBP touchpad, but I was never accustomed to using my thumb on the touchpad to click. I have always used the tap once to left-click and either double-tap, tap and hold or tap+Alt/Option to right-click.

I found the huge space of the touchpad and the tactile quality of the material used to be excellent. IMHO, after tweaking some settings, I like the envy touchpad much better than any other Windows touchpad I have used previously. Of course, it does not compare to the convenience of using the MBP touchpad in OSX.

After enabling momentum glide pointing, edge motion and coasting for 2-finger scrolling, as as installing the Scrybe app for programmable multi-touch gestures, I found a significant improvement. Also, I found the ChromeTouch extension for google chrome to be helpful for maneuvering webpages by pulling and dragging the page around like the iPad interface.

The main gripe that I have is that there seems to be no way to double-tap or tap and hold for right-click, or some other option for right-click other than physically pressing down on the bottom right corner. Is there some other setting to change this that I am not aware of?

Also, it seems that no matter what setting I adjust, in most applications, Windows does not allow for very smooth zooming when I pinch and zoom. The zooming in Windows seems to be very jerky. In OSX the zooming is a smooth transition.

 

i think the trackpad is fine, tap to click is the way to go.

 

The trackpad is beyond abysmal for me, I honestly can't use it. It's reduced my productivity considerably, considering I bought this computer for work I'm thinking about starting a class action lawsuit due to not being warned or in any way informed of this feature. As a product designer myself my first thought was this shows blatant incompetence and negligence on the part of HP's product design team.

Would anyone else be interested in joining this? This really is the only way to get HP's attention.

 

I just post in the 14 trackpad thread since, as far as I know, the pads are the same. I use the software in that thread, and my pad works better until it stops depressing and/or becomes unresponsive. I never leave home without my mouse now.

 

Are you serious?

Learn how to use it. It works fine for pretty much everyone else.

 

If you look around there are numerous complaints. I've found that the touchpad has reduced my productivity 11.2%, simply due to the constant faults, espetially in clicking and dragging which is almost impossible to do. I've tried all of the settings, and it used to be worse before I turned palm check to maximum.

I'm 100% serious. I would expect to be sued if I made a product like this for the mass market.

 

Well if you looked at the actual mouse options you can disable the mutitouch completely and just enable the right side to scroll up and down

 

Going through all the options 3 times, I'm not seeing any way to disable multi-touch. You can disable gestures, but that doesn't help the situation. Could you clarify?

 

let me know how that class action suit goes for you

 

A class action lawsuit is ridiculous. lol

 

the options are right there

 

I've become very accustomed to the Envy 15 trackpad and after tweaking the following settings, I find it much more intuitive and productive than any other trackpad I have used, including the MBP trackpad:

(1) enable tapping for left click and set up the top right corner as a tap zone for right click

(2) enable momentum glide

(3) enable coasting for 2-finger scroll

With these settings, there is no need to ever physically press down on the trackpad with your thumb for right click or left click, and the momentum glide and coasting greatly improve the experience.

 

Go on to the trackpad thread and download some of the recommended software called 'envy trackpad'

For me it made a HUGE difference. Mine now performs just like a macbook pro

 

I just realised this is an Envy 15 and the software i'm talking about is for the envy 14, it still might work though....

 

Actually my girlfriend is a lawyer and she doesn't think it's ridiculous at all. The case issue is identical to the iPhone 4 death grip "feature". Except HP hasn't provided a free solution like the Apple bumper to solve the issue therefore still making them liable.

That doesn't do anything at all. To be clear the issue is that the Envy 15 trackpad lacks a deadzone on the buttons which makes the pointer erratic, reducing clicking efficiency and causing possible inaccurate clicks.

 

That right-side scroll thing isn't nearly as precise as the old designated scroll line. Further, sometimes the pads cease to depress, all but disabling the traditional right- and left-click features. No solution, in my humble opinion, really makes this pad work as well as a traditional one or Apple's. I have disabled the original software, downloaded two of the amateur versions here and made do with that. Even then, though, the problem when it stops depressing becomes very frustrating. I can usually just disable and re-enable the mouse, regaining functionality for inconsistent periods of time.

 

The software does work. I use it, and I have an Envy 17. How do I create that right-click zone, though? That sounds good.

 

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but tap and drag is working terribly for me. Enabling glide and increasing sensitivity has been a good help, though. If I could get tap and drag and right-click to work, I'd be great.