x220 replace touchpad

Greetings! I was wondering if anyone has attempted to replace or mod the touchpad on an x220. Im not very satisfied with the current touchpad and would like one with a smooth surface. Anything would be appreciated, thanks!

P.S. Been awhile!

 

god, tell me about it. Everyone hates it.

 

I need physical buttons for it.

 

apple's touch pad light years ahead.

 

Helpful.

10.

 

why not cut a piece a screen protector of a mobile phone to put over the touchpad, this worked wonders for me on my sager making it very smooth

 

Sorry, I only speak the truth.

 

Nothing wrong with that, if the truth actually helps the discussion. Your avatar is pretty funny though.

 

Subjective matters have no truth to be spoken of.

 

Thanks all. I decided to just cover it with some kind of smooth adhesive material. Dont know why i just didnt think of that before... Haha

 

Can't you just take off the bump coating? I know you can on the T series trackpads...

 

Really??? Pics please... The bumps have worn off on mine and I would be OK with it being gone or replaced...

 

It's pretty simple: grab a pin or a knife and gently pry up the pad covering from one of the corners.

 

Never heard of this before. The "bump" texture is literally just a sticker overlay? Don't have any current-gen Thinkpads around to check that on, but if it's removable, that'd be pretty interesting.

 

It is on the T420 and friends. I don't know about on the X series.

I removed mine and haven't added a matte overlay. That might be a bad idea, so if you're the cautious type go grab a trackpad skin from somewhere and pop it over the bare pad surface.

 

Mind posting a pic of your T420...

 

Yes, but only because I don't have a camera.! It's a smooth black surface underneath the sticker. There's really not much to see.

 

Understood... Anyone know if this is a part available from Lenovo? I have no problem with the little bumps, I just hate that some areas are now smooth...

 

AFAICT it doesn't have a FRU number, so no.

 

thanks for checking...

 

I have a spare T420 palmrest with a spoilt rubber trackpad lying around (accident with super glue...) so I could try use the penknife method suggested by ThinkRob and provide the pics of this flat surface when I have time.

 

It would be greatly appreciated!

 

So I took out my spare palmrest which was in a sorry state after spilling some glue while fixing something for my sister. It wasn't pretty...



So I got my sharp compass and picked the edges of the rubber trackpad...



... and whaddya know. It peels right off pretty easily.

Once that textured rubber trackpad sticker was peeled away it leaves a rather smooth and pleasant to touch trackpad to glide your fingers over. Not that I use it myself, I always prefer Trackpoints myself!

 

New ThinkPad option for 2012:

textured trackpad ........................... [included in price]

smooth trackpad ............................. [add $25]​

 

Actually if they offer:

Touchpad /wo physical buttons ........................... [included in price]

Touchpad /w physical buttons ............................. [add $125]​

I would definitely pay the premium for sure.

 

This ain't Apple.

If it were Lenovo doing this, it would read:

Code:

[*] Textured TrackPad                   $0.00
[ ] Smooth TrackPad                     $--.-- ($0.00 through 02/29/11!)

And the date would always be a couple days from today.

 

Yeah. The X220 trackpad "experiment" was epic fail. I hope they fix it (by going back to X201-style trackpad) in the 2012 iteration.

 

Thanks for the pictures, Hearst, very interesting indeed! Wonder if this is possible on the X220... my first instinct would be "no," since the buttons are integrated with the surface, but hard to say since I don't have an X220 in front of me.

I think the problem was that with the X201's trackpad, every review criticized it for having a miniscule trackpad. So, Lenovo opted to increase the size of the trackpad by integrating the buttons into the touchpad. And now every review criticizes it for being a clickpad.

The reality is that there's only so much vertical space on the X220 (especially with the 16:9 aspect ratio), so you have to make a compromise somewhere if you want to keep the 7-row keyboard. Either:

• Trackpad with integrated buttons, as in the X220
• Absolutely tiny trackpad with distinct buttons, as in the X201 (I would prefer this)
• Entirely removing the trackpad, which would alienate many users, including my dad
• Using a custom non-7-row keyboard that isn't as tall, which would alienate most traditionalist Thinkpad users
• Removing the Trackpoint and associated buttons, but then it wouldn't even be a Thinkpad

 

How about having a truly buttonless trackpad (not clickpad, just a mouse movement and gesture pad), and use the trackpoint buttons or tap to click.

 

I was thinking about that as well, but it would be a bit of an ergonomic adjustment. Not entirely unpractical, though.

 

Then all the reviews would criticize it for not having buttons and thus being too "difficult" to use.

 

I visited a major PwC downtown office the other day. All the "consultants" use ThinkPads, a mixture of T420 and X220, each having a wired mouse.

 

Yah, but that doesn't say too much about the thinkpad touchpad. If it was an office I worked at every day I'd for sure have a wired mouse there. Wired mouse is (in my mind) always superior to using a touchpad (any brand). Now if you were to say they brought a mouse to a meeting outside of the office, that says something different ha.

 

The touchpad doesn't seem a big deal to them. (Like the resolution and "quality" of the screens most people here, including myself, debate rather passionately.)

Looks like they do. I commute and work with some of them. Huge Excel spreadsheets are their life.

 

It's pretty common nowadays to see people using a wireless mice away from a desk. Most people I know that aren't Mac users or diehard Trackpoint fans seem to carry one around everywhere.

 

the x220 (and most thinkpads) has an expresscard 54 port, you can use that to carry a mogo mouse.
you can get those off amazon for around $30 or so
they recharge off the expresscard and are stored in it when you dont use them, it's great.
it also has a presentation mode, which turns the left/right click buttons into prev/next slide buttons, and middle click activates a laser pointer.
killer feature imho

tbh that mouse is so awesome that the expresscard54 was a must-have feature in the choice of a replacement for my hp2730p

oh and yeah, the replacement is a x220t

 

On a related note, boy is it surprising to see how many people never bother to learn keyboard shortcuts. I would think that if someone is doing the sort of work that requires him type all the time that he'd want to keep his hands on the keyboard as much as possible. Maybe the "need" for a separate mouse is a side-effect of that?

 

I was an Emacs jock until the fancy GUI spoiled me. The keys are useful in the context of text editing (characters, keys, fingers), but the mouse is arguably better suited for random navigation. For example, try to browse the web with keys alone.

When I am in creative mode (which is extremely rare), I simply type and type and type to get all the bits out of my tiny brain. Then, when it's time to make my work presentable, mouse away.

 

The culprit is the 16:9 LCD. Go back to a 16:10 panel to get more vertical space to add their trackpad mouse buttons back. They'd be pretty much back at at X201 chassis dimensions which would result in many happy customers.

It's not like it's impossible. 12.1" Sandy Bridge systems that still use a 16:10 aspect LCD are: HP 4230s and 2760P tablet, Fujitsu P701/P771.

Or else go a 6-row keyboard as highlighted. 2560P does that so manages to add a impressive glass touchpad with two physical buttons.

 

If they ever make an X330 with 16:10 IPS, touchpad with physical buttons I'd be happy to replace my X220 even if it's expensive.

 

I don't think its possible to remove the bump texture on the touchpad for the X220, looking closely with a magnifying glass I don't see any edges. Unless the bump texture fits flush.

Also the clickpad on the X220 isn't too bad, just two issues I noticed is that tracking isn't very smooth and right click is iffy. But trackpoint definately the way to go.

 

It's definitely not possible to remove the texture however it may be possible to grind it down.

Anyone have any suggestions? how to wear out the surface?

 

hi

i discovered this thread cause i hate the touchpad of my x220 and its the only thing i hate about it but its definitely a big thing

it is possible to just use the trackpoint buttons instead but who seriously wants that? its just strange, right?

i would even say the clickpad isnt THAT a big thing... but the drivers suck, first - orginal synaptics driver is superior to the lenvo one and one BIG thing is this: usually u always have ur left index finger on the touchpad (if u use two hands) and surf around with the right one, but if u do that the surfing is lagging!!!, the next thing is if u have the left finger on the pad and u want to rightclick it is a comboclick of left and right click, cant u just fix this with good drivers????

i tried to put some stuff on the touchpad to rest my finger on but then i realised in order to click the touchpad u have to capazitively touch it!!! try to press the touchpad with a pen, it is not making a click, just like with the iphone, only if u didnt install any drivers but even then a RIGHT click is not possible... only standard left

apart from the surface which sucks and and of course no physical buttons that also suck i would manage to use the "clickbuttons" but the "rest finger on touchpad problem" is too major for me to compromise... so i use the upper trackpoint button for resting the finger on and making leftclicks... but i always feel like i wanna have a mouse -.-

what do u guys think about it, am i right? isnt that the biggest problem (no discussion about that the input device sucks generally^^)

another question: did anyone alrdy use that mogo expresscard54 mouse? how comfortable is it compared to those little laptop mouses, cause it would help with the dillemma of the touchpad of the x220 without losing mobility

sry english is not my mother tongue
greetings!

 

I always absolutely hated terrible two-finger scrolling on my X220. Until I tred it in Linux and got surprised at how great it actually works (not much worse than MacBook).
Just saying.

 

Doesn't surprise me. Most of the "magic" of Apple's "special touchpads" is actually just well-written drivers. I didn't know how driver support for the X220 touchpad was under Linux, but I know that it's been quite good on a number of my past ThinkPads (often much better than the Windows counterparts), so that seems in line with what I've observed.

 

yeah

i mean it makes me very angry to know that a lot can be solved by software, by simply improving drivers

so much ppl complain about that touchpad!!! seriously

 

I ordered some replacement trackpad protector skins, thinking you could just peel the X220 coating off, but it doesn't appear to be intended for that.

I'll use them as covers, so at least it will be smooth and protected. I really don't like the bumpy texture. It feels sticky and clunky.

After the fresh install of Windows today, and almost no drivers from Lenovo, I do seem to notice the pad working better as far as clicks go (could be my imagination though), however I don't mind using the trackpoint buttons all that much, or just using touch/pen instead of the pad.