Re: new laptop

On 2006-08-31, BillW50 <BillW50@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers wrote:
On 2006-08-31, BillW50 <BillW50@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers wrote:
On 2006-08-30, BillW50 <BillW50@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers wrote:

snip

I don't use Windows so I can't make any suggestions about that.

Oh this feature is in the driver. And if you don't use Windows (are you
using Linux?), then a driver like this wouldn't do you much good. As
Linux can't use Windows drivers yet, or can they now?

Linux users tend to use Linux drivers, either those provided by the
hardware makers or those written independently. If you plan to use Linux
then it's a good idea to buy hardware that works with Linux ;))

But when you say you turn off your touchpad, do you mean you turn off
the tap to click feature? As when that is off, your pointer will
float around from my thumbs and palm touching the pad while I type.
But it doesn't matter to me where it floats to while I am typing
away. Does it to you? As the I-beam isn't effected at all.

My touchpad has a push-button which toggles the touchpad on or off,
and an LED to indicate the current status. The best illustration I
can find is in the manual, which is on line at
<http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c00218664.pdf> - the picture is
on page 1-23 (or page 28 of 192 in my PDF reader). When 'off', the
on-screen pointer is frozen in place (I try always to 'park' it where
I can find it again!) and there is no response of any kind from the
touchpad.

Oh that is pretty cool. I didn't know they made such an animal. I don't
believe my Gateway MX6124 has such a feature. Even a hotkey to
enable/disable would be handy at times. One could do so through the
Device Manager, but what a pain that would be to go through switching
back and forth.

Whoever decreed that touchpads should go in precisely the wrong place,
should be made to stand up and apologise in public. Frequently.

Disabling the 'tap to click' feature would certainly overcome the
problem of having the insertion point in the current document moving
about unexpectedly, and the problem of having 'focus' moved to a
different 'window' (as long as your set-up doesn't change focus
according to the pointer position even without a 'click'). It just
leaves you to find the pointer again when next you want to use it.

There are other adjustments in the driver that they can adjust that
allows the software sense the difference between a palm touching vs. a
finger complete with sliders. I haven't played around them yet. But
disabling touch to click works pretty well for me so far.

Although I miss this feature, but I have made mistakes with it on. And
I'm curious if the convinence of having it on is worth it anyway? As I'm
new with a touchpad, so it might be me. But I have dropped stuff in the
wrong area, accidently clicked an item I was zooming by with the
pointer, etc. Does others have this problem with the touch to click
feature is turned on too? Or with experience these newbie problems
disappear?

'Tap to click' is both infuriating and quite useful. If you enable all
the fancy features in a Synaptics touchpad, you can spend ages trying to
work out how to use them - and still get lost often. They're just too
clever by half - and almost always fitted in the wrong place for anyone
who actually uses the keyboard.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~
.

Loading