4 ms·

How are the keyboard and trackpad? IMO, bad trackpads are the biggest pitfall of cheap (and not-so-cheap) laptops, by far. At least with a bad screen you can s

How are the keyboard and trackpad? IMO, bad trackpads are the biggest pitfall of cheap (and not-so-cheap) laptops, by far. At least with a bad screen you can still generally read the interface without too much trouble, but a bad trackpad can make a computer really frustrating to use!

stkdump 4y ago
Wouldn't be a huge problem for me. If I am merely operating a device, then the touchscreen is good enough. For serious work, I use external peripherals anyway.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  I don't think this computer has a touchscreen?
  - stkdump 4y ago
    Right. I think most Chromebooks do, but this one seems to be the exception.
    - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
      I teach programming classes in elementary schools around NYC, so I have a lot of experience with very low-end Chromebooks, and most of them don't have touchscreens. With the exception of one particular school, these computers are all perfectly adequate performance-wise, but the awful touchpads just ruin everything.
agraddy 4y ago
My experience is that the touchpad on Chromebooks is high quality and really nice (I prefer it to a lot of other touchpads I've worked with). I can also boot fully into Linux (slightly different than what is described in the tweets), however when using Linux, the touchpad becomes terrible. I'm guessing if I spent time figuring out the proper drivers I could probably get it working nice on Linux too but it just hasn't been worth the effort for me. I really like the keyboard too, but I think that is probably more individual taste.
- fragmede 4y ago
  You’re looking for https://galliumos.org/ https://galliumos.org/, which takes the touchpad drivers out of chromeos and puts them into an xfce4 Linux distro
  - agraddy 4y ago
    Thanks so much! I figured there was something out there but really didn't want to spend the time looking for it.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  > My experience is that the touchpad on Chromebooks is high quality and really nice Have you used the really cheap ones though? I have had very bad experiences with the touchpads on ChromeOS devices used by schools.
  - wildrhythms 4y ago
    Yes, the older Chromebooks have some terribly inconsistent trackpad experiences. There is an older Acer model (circa 2017) that had one of the worst I've ever seen... way too sensitive even with the settings adjusted, palm detection didn't seem to work at all, and after just a month or two of normal use trackpads started double-activating (we had a whole fleet of these!) Newer models are better. I'm sure software updates have fixed a lot of the palm detection issues. But similar situation with Windows laptops, PC notebook manufacturers are 20 years behind Apple on trackpads.

stkdump 4y ago

Wouldn't be a huge problem for me. If I am merely operating a device, then the touchscreen is good enough. For serious work, I use external peripherals anyway.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
I don't think this computer has a touchscreen?
- stkdump 4y ago
  Right. I think most Chromebooks do, but this one seems to be the exception.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    I teach programming classes in elementary schools around NYC, so I have a lot of experience with very low-end Chromebooks, and most of them don't have touchscreens. With the exception of one particular school, these computers are all perfectly adequate performance-wise, but the awful touchpads just ruin everything.

agraddy 4y ago

My experience is that the touchpad on Chromebooks is high quality and really nice (I prefer it to a lot of other touchpads I've worked with). I can also boot fully into Linux (slightly different than what is described in the tweets), however when using Linux, the touchpad becomes terrible. I'm guessing if I spent time figuring out the proper drivers I could probably get it working nice on Linux too but it just hasn't been worth the effort for me. I really like the keyboard too, but I think that is probably more individual taste.

fragmede 4y ago
You’re looking for https://galliumos.org/ https://galliumos.org/, which takes the touchpad drivers out of chromeos and puts them into an xfce4 Linux distro
- agraddy 4y ago
  Thanks so much! I figured there was something out there but really didn't want to spend the time looking for it.
Wowfunhappy 4y ago
> My experience is that the touchpad on Chromebooks is high quality and really nice Have you used the really cheap ones though? I have had very bad experiences with the touchpads on ChromeOS devices used by schools.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  Yes, the older Chromebooks have some terribly inconsistent trackpad experiences. There is an older Acer model (circa 2017) that had one of the worst I've ever seen... way too sensitive even with the settings adjusted, palm detection didn't seem to work at all, and after just a month or two of normal use trackpads started double-activating (we had a whole fleet of these!) Newer models are better. I'm sure software updates have fixed a lot of the palm detection issues. But similar situation with Windows laptops, PC notebook manufacturers are 20 years behind Apple on trackpads.