Microsoft knows this, and have announced at WinHEC that they are looking at making the use of Precision Touchpads a requirement for devices part of the Hardware Compatibility Program, for future versions of Windows 10 after the Creators Update. This, in theory, would mean hardware makers would have no choice but to implement Precision Touchpads rather than touchpads from Synaptics or some other 3rd party trackpad maker if they wish to preload Windows 10 on their devices.
I get the impression that most Windows laptops have perfectly decent trackpad hardware, but they just really suck at the software aspect of the story. More often than not, trackpads will function like a PS/2 mouse, with little to no regard for them actually being surfaces instead of rolling balls or bouncing lasers. Even when laptop makers include terrible third-party drivers with horrid configuration applications, the end result is still garbage.
I’ve never actually used one of these fabled Precision Trackpads before, so I can’t attest to their quality, but from what I hear, they’re almost Apple-level in terms of quality.
And honestly – even a potato would be better than the average Windows trackpad.
Given the abysmal quality of most modern laptop trackpads, and no matter how venerable the Synaptics PS/2 touchpad is, this sounds like a great thing.
They should also require real physical buttons for the touchpads. This “THE TOUCHPAD IS THE BUTTON!” nonsense just doesn’t work. And sure, Apple does a great job of this. But it still doesn’t work nearly as well as real separate buttons.
Edited 2016-12-28 23:10 UTC
I’m still a die-hard microjoystick (eg. TouchPoint) guy because not only does it require actual buttons, there’s no risk of my palm being misinterpreted.
Edited 2016-12-28 23:46 UTC
Careful, Lenovo’s actually tried removing the buttons by making them touch zones on the trackpad. It didn’t actually work, it made the trackpad buggy, and the entire Haswell generation of ThinkPads is dead to ThinkPad fans as a result, but they did try it.
Not only that real buttons provide a tactile feedback, there are also three of them on quality IBM / Lenovo laptop keyboards, so “middle mouse click” (very useful for clipboard operation) or “middle mouse select” are easy to achieve. Additionally they support mouse gestures like in the Opera web browser for actions like (multiple) back and forward (hold down right button, click left button several times). They can also be chosen by hardly moving your thumb (less “way to travel”).
Oh, and it’s properly called “TrackPoint”. 😉
Mandatory XKCD reference: https://xkcd.com/243/
Thanks. I can only blame that mistake on “Don’t stay up for New Years if your sleep cycle is messed-up enough that it would mean semi-accidentally pulling all-nighters in preparation”.
Edited 2017-01-02 04:26 UTC
I completely agree. Physical buttons are worth a lot to me.
I use macbooks all the time, can’t use them without the clickiness. Touch to click just does my nut in
OS X and Linux both have far superior touchpad input to Windows these days on most hardware.
It doesn’t matter when the touchpad is crap, and most touchpads are not very good regardless of your OS.
The OS does make a big difference, though. Most laptops I’ve used, including some pretty crappy ones, the touchpad has been much more usable on Linux. Still annoying as hell, as all trackpads are, but better than the same hardware on Windows.
Sure, but Windows touchpad drivers are pretty shit.
On my Dell laptop both two-finger scroll and edge scroll works perfectly in Ubuntu, on Windows I can’t even get either one working reliably.
I never used edge scroll on my touchpad, but I can confirm that it doesn’t work on Windows 10 1607. The mouse cursor just sits still at left and right edge scroll so it does notice I am at the edge of the touchpad, it just doesn’t scroll.
2 finger scrolling works perfectly fine though, but everything related to more than 1 finger is considered a gesture and can be enabled/disabled in the “Dell Pointing devices software” which is actually a very nice piece of software with some nice options like “disable touchpad & pointstick when USB Mouse is present”
Microsoft did get trackpads right with the precision hardware AND software. I don’t think it is okay to make it a requirement for certification though. They are basically putting Synaptics and others out of business.
No they don’t – “precision shit” is interface not hardware. In simple terms it requires the touchpad to deliver raw touch points rather than processed events. If it worked well it would simplify for hardware manufacturers as they “only” have to detect where fingers are and leaving gesture recognition to MS.
OSNews provides the article, the users provide the much needed information!
Thanks to your comment I read up a bit on what makes a touchpad a precision touchpad. A small bit of it is actually hardware specific, but maybe most touchpads already fit this spec? https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn467309(v…).aspx
Much more surprising and informative was this article: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/pc-oems-ditch-the-custom-tou…
Some highlights:
* Co-developed between Microsoft and touchpad company Synaptics
* But many others we’ve seen, such as the HP Spectre x360 and Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, use custom drivers, typically from Synaptics. As such, they can’t take advantage of the new Windows capabilities.
* touchpads from Synaptics, for example, can work as both Precision Touchpads and “legacy” mouse-emulating touchpads that use the Synaptics driver. It’s just up to the OEM to pick one option or the other
Windows touchpad drivers may be shit but there still seem to be no working solution for these Precision Touchpads on Linux… Although, there might be some legacy option switch in BIOS, that one can toggle and opt-out of the more advanced features, yay!
I don’t get the fuss. The problem is windows drivers. They are awful and not available on a lot of systems for a particular OS. On Linux it works great. One set of drivers instead of this BS of having specific touchpad drivers for specific models. I have a laptop that upgraded to Win10 and the touchpad scrolling works in regular apps but not in metro apps. There is no Win10 driver available for the particular system. I have owned several laptops that have been loaded with linux for almost 2 decades now and have never had a problem with Synaptics touchpads.
Edited 2016-12-29 14:17 UTC
That’s what this precision touchpad stuff is all about apparently… Microsoft making it a certification requirement that the drivers not get in the way and provide raw input data to Windows so it can provide a single, standard interpretation layer that gets it right, similar to libinput on Linux.
I bought a rather expensive zenbook just a couple of month ago. The touchpad was laughable. I mean i really really don’t understand how it got past the Q and A team at Asus because it was pretty much a joke how bad it was.
If it was the work of a engineering student (like his/her first project or something during their first year of uni) i would give it a pass, but seriously Asus you’re selling me this POS and expect me to be fine with it?
I quite like the touchpad on my Asus Zenbook, maybe a model difference or… oh wait I mostly use Linux on it and only rarely boot into Windows 10, so maybe I don’t remember it sucking.
Yeah it was loaded with windows 10 and the touchpad configuration was non-standard because it couldn’t even get it moving at all using linux.
The provided windows driver (asus specific) was pretty pathetic, with next to no options to configure movement, scrolling and acceleration. I distinctly remember the implementation of scroll inertia (when you flick-scroll and it continues scrolling and slows down “naturally”) to be exceptionally bad.
Needless to say i returned it.
Really? This is the exact reason people defend Apple and hate on MS.
Apple cares enough to get the primary input method correct using a combination of hardware, software, and human designers who care enough to make it perform as expected.
I’ve had a good trackpad on my apple laptop since, what, 1999? Something like that. This is ridiculous that windows still can’t make it work right.
A systemic problem, this lack of attention to the user experience.
Apple really isn’t a good example. It’s good that their touchpads are decent because they’ve never made a decent mouse
Back then used to plug a cheap Genius pen-pad for ANYTHING demanding decent input.