Poll: TrackPoint vs TouchPad

Its the first IBM I am buying and I have never used TrackPoint all that much. Actually I never had a computer that had it. But I find many folks here really like TrackPoint over Touchpad. I just want to get the ballpark figure.

Also, please specify if you have any particular choice of TrackPoint amoungst Classic Dome, Soft Dome and the Soft Rim.

 

touchpad for me. i don't like the touchpoint. cant hit what i am aiming for with it. Touchpad has much better control i think.

 

I don't like TrackPoint either - I prefer touchpad. I believe that this is all personal preference and what you want. If you grew up with TrackPoint, then get that, otherwise I'd stay with a touchpad, as they're becoming more and more common place.

 

The trackpoint is more accurate for me and a big plus is that you don't have to take your hands off the keyboard. If you don't like it, try changing your pointer cap. I hate the eraser tip now that i've discovered the Soft Rim cap.

I had three notebooks with touchpads and i'd never go back to one.

 

textured nipple for precision, touchpad for other stuff.

 

I never knew they had different trackpoint 'tips' / 'caps'.

The trackpoint seems to be more precsise.

 

When I first started to use a trackpoint, I wasn't very accurate with it, and used it mostly for "cross screen hops"--say, to grab a menu item, but preferred the touchpad for accuracy.

But with a little practice . . .

 

Touchpad here.

 

Its touchpads for me as well. I have used trackpoints but I just was never comfortable with it.

 

My first laptop had a trackball, my fourth (I had two with no pointing devices whatsoever) had an AccuPoint (Toshiba's version of the TrackPoint.)

I'd used touchpads before, and didn't like them. I picked up the pointing stick right away.

My personal favorite cap is Soft Dome, but this ancient laptop has a classic dome.

 

I ordered a T43. What type of trackpoint is it going to come with? I read a lot that the classic dome is bad and the soft is better. Should I camm Levono and make sure they put a soft dome in it?

 

they will give u all 3s

 

As expected, the trackpoint wins in an IBM forum.

Now, it's no secret that I also prefer the trackpoint. To me it's much more accurate than the touchpad (and I think it's objectively the case, i.e. if you become an "expert" in both, the trackpoint is going to be better). It doesn't require to move my hand or finger, it allows convenient access to all three buttons (not so with a touchpad, where a hand constantly moves related to the buttons), and the bottom line is I get much more feel of the pointer with the trackpoint.

Now, I prefer the soft dome (textured) that now comes by default with all IBM laptops. They also give you the two alternative - classic dome, which is nice as well, and the soft rim, which I personally cannot stand - it's like, concave, damnit!

I'd love to get a spare soft dome to put on my Compaq laptop, but they won't give it to me for free, so I had to put the classic dome there. Still is much better than the cap that came originally with the Compaq.

 

You can get a pack of (IIRC) six caps, two of each type, for $10 from IBM.

Anyway, I've heard the trick to soft rim is to use the rim, not the bowl, to move the trackpoint. I played with soft rim for about five minutes, using that technique, and it was better than using the bowl, but still the soft and classic domes were better, IMO.

Cerebral_mamba, soft dome will be the cap that is installed by default. If you want to change it, there's a small packet with two caps in it, and you can grasp the installed cap with your fingertips, and just push the other cap on.

Anyway, I've actually used a touchpad for LONGER than I've used a TrackPoint, and almost as long as other pointing sticks. I've learned all the tricks to properly using a touchpad. I'm still much better with a TrackPoint. Heck, I even do precision work, even though my settings are set for very high TrackPoint speed.

 

I know, but I find it grossly overpriced. Like, if it was $2, I might have bought it, but $10 for a few small pieces of rubber?

Might try it one of these days...

I get excellent precision with a trackpoint (also on highest sensitivity). I could never get such precision with a touchpad (although I haven't used it as long as you did). I always overshot things...

 

It's better than $8 for two caps. Yeah, I've seen that elsewhere. You get to pick what you get, but it's not worth it.

And, on the touchpads, I usually found myself overshooting stuff in precision work, and it taking forever to get across the screen in other stuff (undershooting - especially in FPSes).

 

I'm using the red trackpoint that came standar on my T43. It's excellent. I have one extra that came with my thinkpad. I didn't think think IBM offered any different touchpoints My touchpoints are both flat. It works excellent. The touchpoint was a major reason for buying a thinkpad. I also have a dell and the touchpoint is useless. I use a wireless mouse on the dell.

 

I like the trackpoint better. I'm not going to make the judgment as to which one is better; I think it comes down to personal preference.

Classic Dome is the one I prefer (I think).

By the way, does anyone know what a "ThouchPad" is? Lol.

 

I don't think I want to know.

 

trackpoint here. touch pad are just too limited.

 

It is all the preference, me guessing if someone is working on the keyboard a lot (touch-typing), they prefer stick shift, if they are just browsing and such, slick "automatic" transmission works as well (or better for some).

Sometimes when I work a lot I even forget I have an external mouse hooked up (or just lazy to move my hand from the keyboard;o), so automatically I quickly use stick to move to whatever place I have to. The good thing with the stick that you do not have to move your hands not even a millimeter to use a mouse.

For me, I can't stand "scratch, scratch, scratch... scratch back, clunk" thingy which is touchpad. I just put my index finger on the stick, press it into direction it has to move to, press left thumb on the button and move index finger back to the "H" ("J" on normal keyboard) key. That's all it takes.

 

I'm in a possition now after two weeks to make a self poll and I went TrackPoint. I use it almost always now, i really love it and find the TouchPad much less convenient now.

 

Sale priced right now, $8.99, shipping is free. Lenovo link.

 

$9 isn't much less than $10. Is shipping to Israel also free?

 

I use whichever one my fingers happen to be closest to. I absolutely love having two pointing devices on my laptop! It becomes so much more convenient.

 

Trackpoint- I surprised myself when after the first month I loved it. However, what I DON'T love is that now when I accidentally brush past the keys adjacent to the trackpoint it sometimes takes me to a random line in the Word doc I am editing and I start typing there. Really irritating. Is there a way to avoid the "press" functionality of the TrackPoint? Or at least disable it?

 

Disabling options (May need ThinkVantage Drivers installed):
1. Press Fn+F8 and you will see a nice menu pop up that will solve your worries
2. If you go into UltraNav and enable taskbar icon, you can simply right click on the icon and disable or enable the TrackPoint/Touchpad/both seperately

Other Solutions:
personally I would consider having to disable the trackpoint while typing very annoying and would not accept it as a solution, particularly since the whole benifit of the trackpoint is to facilitate moviment of the mouse without taking the hands of the keyboard while typing. So here are a few solutions:
1. Go to UltraNav tool and adjust the sensitivity of the Trackpoint. Maybe it got set to maximum sensitivity some how and that is causing this issue.
2. If that does not turn out to be the problem and if you are under warranty, call IBM and ask for a replacement of the keyboard. its a very straight forward procedure for replacing the keyboard. There is no need for you to live with the issue, they ought to and will replace it for you

I find the positioning of the TrackPoint to be ideal and I do not bump into it. So it may also be worthwhile investigating your typing pattern... just a suggestion.

 

He doesn't want to disable the trackpoint, just disable its "press-to-select" feature. It can be done in the Ultranav settings and it's one of the first things I did.

 

What? The Trackpoint has a "Press to Select" feature? I did not see that anywhere. Can you please guide me as to where I can find that option.

EDIT: Sorry, found the option. Don't know how I missed it all along

 

I have a stupid question... I just received T43 today and I really like almost everything. But track pad is not working and can't where the set up button is.. please tell me how to use track pad.. And Can I use trackpad and trackpoint at the same time?
Thanks in advance

 

Yes, you can use both at the same time. Check the Ultranav tab in the Control Panel -> Mouse settings, and see whether the touchpad is from some reason disabled there.

 

Thanks for the reply.. I already check the mouse setting and there is no touchpad options in the control panel, only trackpoint options available.. What should I do? where can I find touchpad setting??

 

Could be that it is disabled in the BIOS or that the drivers are not properly installed.

Look in the BIOS first (restart computer, press F1 as soon as IBM logo appears). If the touchpad is enabled, then I suggest you try reinstalling the Ultranav driver.

 

Thanks..
I looked in the bios and there was no touchpad option only trackpoint option is available. and tried reinstalling Ultranav driver by downloading from Lenovo.com.. Its not working. There is no Ultranav in the device manager.

Should I return it? I was waiting for this machien for one month.. and waiting another one month???

 

Hmmm... Here's how things are in my T42 BIOS:

Config --> Keyboard/Mouse

Inside I have the following options:

Trackpoint
Touchpad
Fn Key Lock
Numlock

Are you saying that you have the same, but without the touchpad?

That's mighty weird. It's like a wrong BIOS was flashed to your T43, or that it somehow fails to recognize the touchpad hardware.

What's your BIOS version/date/Embedded controller version? These should be on the BIOS main page.

I'd contact Lenovo tech support.

 

i used my first t43 when i deployed a bunch of ibms for a company. since, i have bought my own t43 and disabled ultranav upon getting it. i use it everyday because u don't have to move ur finger. u just press in the direction you want to go in.
there's some minor grips i have with trackpoint:
the crosshair isn't as fast as i want it to be, even if i turn the speed all the way up in the control panel since it takes a while (1 second) to navigate across 1400by1050 screen.
sometimes the trackpoint gets jammed or something and start to move right even if i don't touch it.
my index finger has become stronger and visibly wider than my other fingers due to the growth of muscles needed to use trackpoint.
arm pains from using a laptop with a center trackpoint, i'd much prefer it if it were on the right hand side.
when you use other people's laptops, u reach for the center of the keyboard to find the trackpoint,only to be disappointed that it's not there and therefore have to deal with the loathed touchpad with its repeating finger movements to get to places on the screen.
you spend all your time taking off the cap and playing with it, occasionally losing it.

ultranav in my opinion is a waste of space and electricity on ibm's. i don't want to address the effort wasted by people using touchpads. if people didn't like trackpoints, they should have bought a dell (my apologies if i offended you)

 

Pretty darn fast where I am. I set the Ultranav settings to the lightest "Light touch" and the mouse settings to a couple of notches below fastest.

Yep, and then you have to leave it for a few secs for it to recalibrate itself. Small productivity losses, inherent to a trackpoint, unfortunately.

Interesting. Doesn't appear to be the case with me. And I never use touchpads on laptops.

Yeah, well. I don't use people's laptops often enough. Among other things it's _because_ of that.

Haha. Classic!

 

I rarely use the touchpad for mousing, but like it for the scroll zones (easier IMO than center button for touchpoint) and the spots I have mapped to launch applications (tap the upper left to lauch FireFox, for example)

 

Touch Pads are useless... track point is really the standard. Why don;t the rest of em get it? Because nobody can do it like IBM

 

I'd kill for an Athlon64-X2 with TrackPoint.

I hate touchpads more than just about anything.

Far from improving over time, touchpads on new laptops seem to be WORSE than the second-generation touchpads of the late '90s. The REALLY old ones at least tried to emulate the behavior of a thumb-marble (like the Dec HiNote Ultra I had in college), and understood that your thumb is grossly motion-constrained along one axis & tends to follow an arc when you really want to go straight... and compensated accordingly. In other words, they were designed by people who used computers all day FOR people who used their computers all day. They were designed for people used to trackballs and knew how to type.

The new ones seem to be designed for "soccer moms" who type with two fingers and (shudder) use the touchpad with their index finger. That's great if you're a nontechnical "soccer mom", but really sucks if you can type 100+ wpm on a good keyboard, but can't quickly and efficiently use a touchpad with your thumb to save your life. :-(

I wish to god that cost-cutting manufacturers would at least make user-replaceable keyboards with sticks available as an expensive aftermarket option. As it stands, demanding a pointer stick basically eliminates 97% of the laptops currently available.

 

This should be stickied. Preferably to the forehead of every trackpointless laptop manufacturer.

 

Another issue with normal quality touchpads is, that these do suffer a lot from aquaplaning in very hot summer days, which yields to imprecise positioning results. No need to say that Trackpoints don't suffer from these drawbacks.

 

I don't have much experience with trackpoints but I'm definitely not a big fan of touchpads.

I use an external mouse most of the time. But on times I have no choice, the touchpad in my current PC (HP DV1000) strains my finger after just an hour.

 

when using a mouse, do you try and move it with a pinkie? or do you rip on mouse makers for not making the mouse friendly for use with hands on the keyboard?

 

Trackpoint. Thats why you get a thinkpad!

 

If I raced as fast as I could clicking 4 objects in rapid succession, it wouldn't be close.... TRACKPOINT.

 

No question: TRACKPOINT. I can't, for the life of me, understand those who insist on getting/using the touchpad. Trackpoint is 1000x faster, easier to use and more accurate. However, if you enjoy taking more time to accomplish routine tasks and prefer not to use things like spreadsheets then be my guest and use to godforsaken touchpad.

 

I have never had a problem with touchpads and I expected to use the touchpad on my T60 when I purchased it. A few days with the trackpoint, though, and I was hooked.

 

Touchpads are evil. I use both Linux and Windows, and I'm far too lazy to mess with my X configuration to disable the touchpad, and it's ridiculous how often I just barely touch the touchpad and end up clicking on a window and sending the one I'm typing in into the background.

I wish I had thought to make them not put the ****ed thing on there in the first place. The only time I'll actually use it is if my trackpoint somehow breaks, which seems rather unlikely, given my history with them.

 

I am the other way around. I had HP omnibook 500 (very nice concept by the way which for some reason hasn't caught on). Due to its compact size, it only had trackpoint, and I got so used to it. I don't have to take my hand off the keyboard to use the track point and I find it much more efficient. I haven't used anything else but the soft dome that came with my R60 is just fine.