SZ touchpad quality

I've been considering buying an SZ for a while, and have been to a few stores to try them out. The keyboard's felt fine to me, the display's looked acceptable to me.

The touchpad, though, seems sub-par, at least compared to the cheap HP Pavilion that I'm using right now. Mouse movement seems a bit laggy and slow.

Whereas on my HP it feels like the mouse pointer tracks along with my finger with no significant delay, on the Sony there's a delay that's significant enough to be pretty frustrating. This is particularly noticeable when navigating cascading menus, like the Start menu in XP--I find that I'll often overshoot what I'm trying to select, because my finger stops moving and then the pointer stops moving a second later.

Has anyone else had issues with this? Is this something that can be configured away, or do you just get used to it? I'm leery of buying such an expensive laptop if the primary input device is going to drive me nuts.

Thanks in advance.

p.s. I know that there are those who will recommend using a mouse instead of the touchpad, and I can understand that point of view, but that's not a viable option for me. I do like the way a good touchpad works, and I often use my laptop while sitting in an easy chair in my living room that doesn't have a good horizontal surface for a mouse.

 

if you are ok with everything else but the touchpad I say it's least of your worries... I have no problems that you mentioned with mine

 

klas: I just noticed the other thread about the clean XP install, and supposedly there's a BIOS update that improves touchpad responsiveness...have you installed this update?

Thanks.

 

Mine is fine too. It is very responsive. No need to do clean install.

 

just installed BIOS update, no difference...

 

My touchpad works at least as well as any other touchpad I've used.

 

Well, I'm posting this now from a just-opened SZ160. I'd looked at 110's and 120's before and the touchpads had been really slow and unresponsive. When I went to Fry's to look at the 160, they didn't have a demo model out on the floor, they only had two in boxes in the back.

The salesman brought one out and opened it up for me and I played with it for a little bit and the touchpad was just fine.

So either the BIOS update fixed the issue (and was applied to this new 160, but not to the older 110's I looked at), or the other machines I saw had just been abused enough by people looking at them that they behaved weirdly. Or maybe I just saw two machines in two separate stores that had bad touchpads.

Anyway, doesn't seem to be a problem with this one.

Thanks for the info, to all who responded.

 

I would recommend Asus notebooks. They have superior quality and value. (Look at the V6J and W3J)

 

Jesus, that's not even the question asked! What is this, viral marketing? There's a forum for ASUS people you know, and its name ain't SONY.

Back to the topic. I think the touchpad is very good - superior to the Dell ones that I've been using for the last 3 years.

 

I couldnt agree more. This has happened to me, its so irritating. I mean you say you want to get a SZ for sure and they start recommending others


I tried SZ in the store last week and it seemed fine even the touchpad. And I have a HP atm aswell.

 

I have a new sz 160 that is perfect for what I do, and the touchpad works well, but I had trouble with the fingerprint sensor. It would not sense an attempt to read. It turns out that my finger was too dry. Dampened slightly the reader works every time.

 

actually just today i was using touchpad most of the day and had some weird lagging...

 

I think the touchpad may be more sensitive to dry fingers than most. I don't know, maybe I'm making it all up at this point

The surface of it does seem a bit rougher than the one on my old HP, maybe the texture of the surface tends to dry your finger out faster...or something. Regardless, it's quite usable to me now. I really like this laptop.