New touchpad discussion

I wanted to bring up some issues which I have with the new touchpad, and see if others have the same issues or have found any solutions so far.

I personally have a Thinkpad X201, but bought a Thinkpad Yoga for a family member. With my X201 I've gotten used to sometimes resting my left thumb on the left mouse button (like when browsing the web). What I've noticed on the Yoga is that if I do this, and I right-click somewhere (e.g. on a link), it actually left-clicks instead. Presumably this is because the touchpad only has 1 physical button under it, and since it senses that my left thumb was the first to touch the left corner, it fails to register that I actually was trying to do a right-click.

I also don't like that using the touchpad to move the mouse results in the top 3 "buttons" being disabled. Although I primarily use the trackpoint, I found myself sometimes using the touchpad and then trying to use either the top left, middle, or right-click buttons and not having them work.

Of course there is also the issue of the click being very deep and loud, which others have brought up on this forum.

Overall I haven't been too happy using the touchpad on the Yoga. I feel like my X201 is due for an upgrade soon, but I haven't been able to convince myself to buy any of the new Thinkpads, in large part because of the touchpad. On top of that, the X240 only supports 8GB of RAM (which is what I currently have on my X201) and is only single-channel. Pretty disappointing, since I bought my X201 with 2GB of RAM, and eventually upgraded to 4GB and then 8GB. I guess I wanted to discuss the touchpad more in this thread, but it was really the combination of a few issues that kept me from upgrading my X201 (which, when I bought it, felt like the perfect laptop for me - can't really say that with any of the current Thinkpads with all their unnecessary compromises).

What does everybody think? Any tips to overcome those issues with the touchpad? Or any inside scoop on potential improvements to the touchpad in the Broadwell Thinkpads?

Edit: Another thing I noticed was that the Thinkpad X240 is basically the same price as a 13" Macbook Air, even though the MBA has better CPU/GPU (Intel HD5000 vs HD4600), dual channel memory, bigger screen, better battery life, and lighter weight. And considering that the trackpoint (which might have been the only remaining advantage) has been so badly crippled because of the new touchpad, why should I pay the same price for the X240?

 

Yep, I hate clickpads explicitly because of this. It's a problem even on really good clickpads like the Apple ones, and I haven't found a solution that doesn't involve not resting your fingers on the clickpad...

FHD screen. I've been waiting for retina MBAs for two refreshes now...

 

I searched around a bit and found this discussion: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics/+bug/1026046

Looks like there is a patch to the Synaptics driver for Linux that improves the situation. Apparently OS X handles it pretty well, but Windows clearly doesn't.

Rumour has it that a major refresh is coming this summer..

 

The X240 can be upgraded to 16GB of RAM, these modules will become available very soon.

If you don't like the integrated trackpoint buttons on the X240, then wait for the X250. (it will have trackpoint buttons) If you only use the touchpad anyway then there is no reason to be concerned, the X240 has an excellent touchpad. Just make sure you have the latest drivers installed.

 

I'm not questioning because I don't believe you, but how do you know it will have trackpoint buttons? The supposed W1 leak? I'd love to know so that I can have hope again!

 

Because multiple Lenovo employees have confirmed this.

 

That's wonderful! Thank you for sharing.

 

Excellent news, thanks 600X. I do use the trackpoint 90% of the time, so going back to physical buttons would be a welcome change. I hope they bring back the dual-channel memory in the X250 as well (the ~25-30% boost in graphics performance is nice to have).

I had considered the new X1 Carbon as well, but the lack of the function row on the keyboard was what stopped me. I really hope that people voted with their wallets so that Lenovo understands their mistake and backtracks accordingly.