4 ms·

This is pretty interesting, my own personal experience with trackpads on laptops have been quite poor. Not the quality of the trackpad itself just it being high

This is pretty interesting, my own personal experience with trackpads on laptops have been quite poor. Not the quality of the trackpad itself just it being highly annoying having to move the mouse around with one, i always like to plug in an external mouse. One of the main things i dislike is it not naturally being on my right, obviously all laptop makers couldnt do this because of the lefties of the world. The other issue is the actual size of the trackpad on a laptop, its too small, again, not easily fixable on a laptop. So i suppose the external trackpad would solve both these problems, but until i try it out, i'm not sure if i'd like it or not. Certainly interesting though.

powrtoch 16y ago
You say "on a laptop" in the general sense, leading me to wonder if you've tried Mac trackpads recently. I used to feel just like you do, but Apple's trackpads honestly are vastly superior products to any others that I've used. I know this sounds like fanboyism, but that's just been my experience. FWIW, I agree completely that Apple's actual mice are awful.
kls 16y ago
Apple's trackpad is vastly different from a traditional trackpad. It is a multi-touch device similar to the iphone but without the display. There are no buttons the whole thing is a button. You swipe two fingers to scroll up/down click the pad to click. 2 finger click to right click, the list goes on. The point being, it is nothing like a traditional trackpad experience and for me personally it is superior to a mouse. If I used a desktop, I would use the peripheral trackpad no doubt, I could no go back to a mouse now. Another poster mentioned above that they slowly realized that they stopped using their mouse, that is what happened to me as well. One day I realized that I just never pulled my mouse out of my bag anymore. I really think Apple has done a poor job of marketing this one, as I think most that have used it would agree, it is a mouse killer. I do 3D work as a hobby from my old simulation days, and now days I use Blender, the pan, room, rotate is so natural with a trackpad it is unbelievable. And for Photoshop it is a huge productivity booster. It is also nice in an IDE where I spend most of my time because you can navigate select and modify all in single hand stroke. If they ever add gestures for copy / paste I won't know what to do with myself.

powrtoch 16y ago

You say "on a laptop" in the general sense, leading me to wonder if you've tried Mac trackpads recently. I used to feel just like you do, but Apple's trackpads honestly are vastly superior products to any others that I've used. I know this sounds like fanboyism, but that's just been my experience. FWIW, I agree completely that Apple's actual mice are awful.

kls 16y ago

Apple's trackpad is vastly different from a traditional trackpad. It is a multi-touch device similar to the iphone but without the display. There are no buttons the whole thing is a button. You swipe two fingers to scroll up/down click the pad to click. 2 finger click to right click, the list goes on. The point being, it is nothing like a traditional trackpad experience and for me personally it is superior to a mouse. If I used a desktop, I would use the peripheral trackpad no doubt, I could no go back to a mouse now. Another poster mentioned above that they slowly realized that they stopped using their mouse, that is what happened to me as well. One day I realized that I just never pulled my mouse out of my bag anymore. I really think Apple has done a poor job of marketing this one, as I think most that have used it would agree, it is a mouse killer. I do 3D work as a hobby from my old simulation days, and now days I use Blender, the pan, room, rotate is so natural with a trackpad it is unbelievable. And for Photoshop it is a huge productivity booster. It is also nice in an IDE where I spend most of my time because you can navigate select and modify all in single hand stroke. If they ever add gestures for copy / paste I won't know what to do with myself.