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Microsoft to Require Precision Touchpads in Future Windows 10 Laptops

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Re: Microsoft to Require Precision Touchpads in Future Windows 10 Laptops

#31

Post by wyclif »

My wife has a brand-new Lenovo ThinkPad with Windows 10, and the touchpad is a total disaster. Now, this shouldn't be interpreted as PC haterade: until fairly recently I was a big ThinkPad guy (but with Linux), and switched to MacBook Pro only after they went Intel. But these touchpads on the new ThinkPads are cheap and tacky. I can't imagine having to use one every day.

So any effort PC/Win laptop makers are taking to improve things is welcome. I doubt they'll ever be as good as the touchpads on Apple hardware, though.

Re: Microsoft to Require Precision Touchpads in Future Windows 10 Laptops

#32

Post by BillinghamJ »

wluu wrote: post #16

Microsoft should release their own multi-touch touchpad with this tech and call it the Surface Touchpad or something along those lines. Basically their equivalent of the Apple Magic Trackpad. It's what I miss when I've got my Surface Book docked, having come from a MBP/Magic Trackpad setup.

The trackpads built into the Surface computers are still nowhere near the level of Apple's.

Re: Microsoft to Require Precision Touchpads in Future Windows 10 Laptops

#33

Post by philipov »

wyclif wrote: post #31

My wife has a brand-new Lenovo ThinkPad with Windows 10, and the touchpad is a total disaster. Now, this shouldn't be interpreted as PC haterade: until fairly recently I was a big ThinkPad guy (but with Linux), and switched to MacBook Pro only after they went Intel. But these touchpads on the new ThinkPads are cheap and tacky. I can't imagine having to use one every day. So any effort PC/Win laptop makers are taking…

I'm surprised she went with Lenovo, and unsurprised with the results, given their history of anticonsumer practices. They've been caught putting malware on their laptops a few times recently[0]. The ThinkPads made by Lenovo should never be compared with the ones made by IBM - that era is over.

[0]: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/now-three-pre-installed-malware...

Re: Microsoft to Require Precision Touchpads in Future Windows 10 Laptops

#34

Post by Klathmon »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #32
wluu wrote: post #16

Microsoft should release their own multi-touch touchpad with this tech and call it the Surface Touchpad or something along those lines. Basically their equivalent of the Apple Magic Trackpad. It's what I miss when I've got my Surface Book docked, having come from a MBP/Magic Trackpad setup.

The trackpads built into the Surface computers are still nowhere near the level of Apple's.

I disagree, having used both the Surface trackpads are honestly my favorite.

The only thing I wish they had was more customizable software

Re: Microsoft to Require Precision Touchpads in Future Windows 10 Laptops

#35

Post by ch_123 »

wyclif wrote: post #31

My wife has a brand-new Lenovo ThinkPad with Windows 10, and the touchpad is a total disaster. Now, this shouldn't be interpreted as PC haterade: until fairly recently I was a big ThinkPad guy (but with Linux), and switched to MacBook Pro only after they went Intel. But these touchpads on the new ThinkPads are cheap and tacky. I can't imagine having to use one every day. So any effort PC/Win laptop makers are taking…

FWIW - On the last Thinkpad I bought (the X220) the touchpad was notably worse under than Windows with the official vendor drivers compared with Linux using whatever came out of the box. Two finger scrolling comes to mind - on Linux it worked smoothly, but with Windows, there was a considerable lag between me scrolling on the touchpad, and scrolling actually happening in the application.

Re: Microsoft to Require Precision Touchpads in Future Windows 10 Laptops

#36

Post by zbrozek »

wluu wrote: post #16

Microsoft should release their own multi-touch touchpad with this tech and call it the Surface Touchpad or something along those lines. Basically their equivalent of the Apple Magic Trackpad. It's what I miss when I've got my Surface Book docked, having come from a MBP/Magic Trackpad setup.

Indeed they should! I'd like to have a good pointer that I can glue to my keyboard and use leaned back.

I'd also like to configure what the gestures mean; there's no way to make three finger tap act like middle click. I use a Surface Pro 4. Microsoft has been very heavy handed about insisting you gesture only the way they want you to gesture. I really don't need a gesture to launch an already-disabled Cortana.

Re: Microsoft to Require Precision Touchpads in Future Windows 10 Laptops

#38

Post by wildmusings »

ch_123 wrote: post #35
wyclif wrote: post #31

My wife has a brand-new Lenovo ThinkPad with Windows 10, and the touchpad is a total disaster. Now, this shouldn't be interpreted as PC haterade: until fairly recently I was a big ThinkPad guy (but with Linux), and switched to MacBook Pro only after they went Intel. But these touchpads on the new ThinkPads are cheap and tacky. I can't imagine having to use one every day. So any effort PC/Win laptop makers are taking…

FWIW - On the last Thinkpad I bought (the X220) the touchpad was notably worse under than Windows with the official vendor drivers compared with Linux using whatever came out of the box. Two finger scrolling comes to mind - on Linux it worked smoothly, but with Windows, there was a considerable lag between me scrolling on the touchpad, and scrolling actually happening in the application.

I've noticed the same thing with my T530. The Windows drivers for the Thinkpad also don't let you set the middle trackpoint button to middle-click. There was a way to get it to work by editing the registry, but that's stopped working in recent versions too. I don't understand why Lenovo keeps putting out user-hostile driver updates for Windows. I don't see how it benefits Lenovo, so I guess it's just total incompetence.

And yeah, just like you, I find the default behavior under both Fedora and Ubuntu to be perfect.

Re: Microsoft to Require Precision Touchpads in Future Windows 10 Laptops

#39

Post by runnr_az »

radicalbyte wrote: post #24
Sephr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How "new" are we talking here? Dell's XPS line has had precision touchpads since the beginning of 2015.

The 2016 XPS touchpad is horrible.

Yeah... my XPS 13 Developer Edition trackpad is basically unusable.

Re: Microsoft to Require Precision Touchpads in Future Windows 10 Laptops

#40

Post by devopsproject »

therein wrote: post #23
jacquesc wrote: post #2

This seems like a great move to me. I started using a 2016 Razer Stealth, and the worst thing about it is the Synaptics Touch crapware they include to configure the touch pad.

How is the trackpad otherwise, though?

terrible?
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