The ThinkPad Touchpad. Why does it suck SO BAD?

[Plinkerton]

I use the trackpoint or a mouse mostly, but sometimes I just want to use the touch pad. It sucks really bad. There is pretty much no acceleration on it, and there is NO way, as far as I know to change it to anything decent. I've already tried all the settings in the wizard, and the preferences.

Walk up to any POS notebook in Comp USA, and you will see a HUGE difference. The faster you move your finger, the farther the pointer moves across the screen. On my T42, if I drag my finger slowly across, then do it quickly, the pointer will always end up in the same place.

Why is there no setting for this, and how could they possibly overlook this aspect of it? It's crazy, and pretty much un-useable because of this.

is there a small separate driver/program/anything I could use that would make it better?

Thanks a lot,
Plink

[atlacatl]

Being a user of the pad and not the track point, I can't agree with you. The pad in the ThinkPad is superior to most of the ones I've tried before: Some Sony and mostly Dells...

Perhaps you need to use it more than once to get the hang of it...

[ZPrime]

my touchpad moves quicker the faster i move my finger...

have you checked the windows mouse driver settings? make sure "enhance pointer precision" is turned on. I have that on and the speed at max, and my trackpoint is ok, touchpad is ok, and my mouse (logitech notebook optical plus) is usable too.

i'd like the mouse a little more sensative, but oh well.

[Plinkerton]

It moves quicker, but not farther, as most other ones do. I have been using it for a while, so it's not that.

When I put the pointer at the bottom of the screen, and I put my finger at the bottom of the touchpad, then I bring it UP VERY QUICKLY, it takes 3 of those movements just to reach the top of the screen, when it should take one or less.

That's what I mean.

Where is this "enhance pointer precision"? I don't think I see it.

I just need to find an "acceleration" setting, as there doesn't seem to be one. The faster I move my finger, the farther the pointer should move, in the same distance I move my finger.

[Greg Gebhardt]

I use the trackpoint or a mouse mostly, but sometimes I just want to use the touch pad. It sucks really bad. There is pretty much no acceleration on it, and there is NO way, as far as I know to change it to anything decent. I've already tried all the settings in the wizard, and the preferences.

Walk up to any POS notebook in Comp USA, and you will see a HUGE difference. The faster you move your finger, the farther the pointer moves across the screen. On my T42, if I drag my finger slowly across, then do it quickly, the pointer will always end up in the same place.

Why is there no setting for this, and how could they possibly overlook this aspect of it? It's crazy, and pretty much un-useable because of this.

is there a small separate driver/program/anything I could use that would make it better?

Thanks a lot,
Plink

I will also have to not agree. I am a touch-pad user and the IBM Tp pad is one of the best I have used. The only time I use the red joy stick is if I hit it while typing! <vbg>

[Kenn]

A couple of things:

Plinkerton: Go to your video settings and change your monitor refresh rate to 85hz. That, along with pointer precision on will give you a good fast response rate on the touchpad. And yes there acceleration - it's controlled via windows, not the ultranav driver. If you want even more acceleration, I know it's controlled by a registry setting that you can tweak - google should be able to help there.

As for the touchpad itself, for me it's a mixed blessing. The pad itself feels good and the buttons are FANTASTIC - tactile yet silent (which is a very nice feature sometimes, especially compared to the CLICK CLICK CLICK of my old HP). The edgemotion scrolling seems a lot more choppy and unreliable than my old laptop though. With the t42, when I use the coasting feature there is a 1-second delay before it starts, and then it keeps going even after I try to stop it (and I've tried all manner of combination of windows and application-level smooth-scrolling and lines-per-scroll settings too). There's that faux-dead-pixel that fools all the newbs (including me), and sometimes the cursor just inadvertantly changes to the scroll icon and flashes at me. So in the end, I guess it's hardware good, software bad. At least this way there's hope for a driver update.

[Plinkerton]

it seems that in the video settings it only goes up to 60hz or so. It's the only choice.

When you say, "yes there acceleration-it's controlled via windows" where exactly is this? That's all i'm looking for. I figured it would be in the ultranav driver, as it makes NO sense at all for it to be somewhere else.

Do I have to edit the registry to make it better? I'd rather not do that if I can help it.

I like everything else about the touchpad. I'm used to the choppiness, and I love the tactile feeling of it.

I just wish it had a normal acceleration setting like everything else does...

You guys who love the touch pad, will you answer this?

Move the pointer on the screen to the very bottom of the screen. Then, put your finger on the very bottom of the touchpad. Then, as if you get the pointer to the top of the screen on the monitor, drag your finger straight up very quickly. How many of those motions does it take to get the pointer to the top of the screen? It SHOULD take ONE or LESS. On mine, it takes 3.5.

That's the problem I'm having. I love everything else about it, but this fact makes it unuseable. If yours is better, there must be some way to get mine like yours.

And where is this "enhance pointer precision" box?

Thanks,
Plink

[Kenn]

it seems that in the video settings it only goes up to 60hz or so. It's the only choice.

When you say, "yes there acceleration-it's controlled via windows" where exactly is this? That's all i'm looking for. I figured it would be in the ultranav driver, as it makes NO sense at all for it to be somewhere else.

Do I have to edit the registry to make it better? I'd rather not do that if I can help it.

I like everything else about the touchpad. I'm used to the choppiness, and I love the tactile feeling of it.

I just wish it had a normal acceleration setting like everything else does...

You guys who love the touch pad, will you answer this?

Move the pointer on the screen to the very bottom of the screen. Then, put your finger on the very bottom of the touchpad. Then, as if you get the pointer to the top of the screen on the monitor, drag your finger straight up very quickly. How many of those motions does it take to get the pointer to the top of the screen? It SHOULD take ONE or LESS. On mine, it takes 3.5.

That's the problem I'm having. I love everything else about it, but this fact makes it unuseable. If yours is better, there must be some way to get mine like yours.

And where is this "enhance pointer precision" box?

Thanks,
Plink

Enhance precision: Control Panel, Mouse, Pointer Options, click the checkbox. And yes the Ultranav tab is kind of there too, so it makes at least some sense

Re: the 3.5 thing, your pointer speed is too slow. The slider right above "enhance pointer precision" lets you increase the mouse speed. Mine is on the fastest setting.

There's a way to tweak acceleration even more by editing the registry, but I'm not going there either.

Re: 60hz, uncheck the "hide modes this monitor cannot display" box. You'll see refresh rates up to 120Hz. At 60Hz, it takes 1 flick bottom to top. At 75Hz it takes almost half a flick less.

[Plinkerton]

Well. I think I found the problem. I have the software installed for my Logitech wireless mouse. It seems to disable what you are mentioning to do. Maybe I'll just uninstall it.

EDIT: Okay, that worked. i uninstalled everything, and now my touchpad functions like it should! Thanks everyone, you never fail to help me with my problems.

Something about raising the hz of the screen refresh though. Even when I hit "hide modes this monitor cannot display" thing, and hit Apply at the bottom, 60 is still the only thing it shows.

Thanks again. Now the touchpad is perfect, but the mouse is like a bat outta hell.

[ZPrime]

yes, logitech's mouse software will totally screw up your touchpad/trackpoint settings. don't use it if you can help it.

Re: changing refresh rate - I want some of whatever Kenn is smoking. Screen refresh has nothing whatsoever to do with mouse speed. Also, you won't be able to change it above 60hz -- you have an LCD panel and it is "locked in" at 60hz. If you hooked up an external monitor you could do whatever you want that the monitor can handle... it still doesn't make the mouse track different though. the screen will redraw quicker, which can be easier on your eyes, but it won't make your cursor travel any different.

[Plinkerton]

Thanks for clearing that up ZPrime. I have also though I had heard that the screen refresh rate makes a difference. I don't know anything about this stuff though.

Yeah, no more Logitech crap for me. It didn't let me do anything. The mouse still seems to function just as before, so I'm just going to leave it off. It's worth it to have a useful trackpad.

Thanks again,
Plink

[MSE Environmental]

The first thing I did when I configured my T42 was to disable the touch pad. I hate those things, not just IBMs, but especially Dell's. I do think the IBM's is better than most though, it just feels better.

The trackpoint is much easier and more intutive to use. The only thing worse than the touch pad is the old roller ball that Acer used to use. I had one of those on an Acer laptop back in the mid 90s and it was a piece of junk. I had to replace it twice in a one year period. What a piece of crap.

Of course, that Acer had a whopping 8 meg of RAM and I thought it could have flown an F-16 in 1994!

I'll probably never go back to anything that doesn't have a trackpoint.

[daeojkim]

Hmm I am don't have a problem using mine... it is as good or better than ones that I had before.

[Plinkerton]

Mine's rockin now. It's how it should be. It just wasn't configured right, and the stupid Logitech stuff took that option away, so it seemed like it didn't even exist. I'm not a huge fan of trackpads, but sometimes it's a nice change from using the trackpoint. I figure if it has both, I'm gonna use both.

I like it now, and the actual tactile feeling of the IBM touchpad, I much prefer over others. It's rough but smooth, and it feels great.

Thanks again everyone.
Plink

[Kenn]

yes, logitech's mouse software will totally screw up your touchpad/trackpoint settings. don't use it if you can help it.

Re: changing refresh rate - I want some of whatever Kenn is smoking. Screen refresh has nothing whatsoever to do with mouse speed. Also, you won't be able to change it above 60hz -- you have an LCD panel and it is "locked in" at 60hz. If you hooked up an external monitor you could do whatever you want that the monitor can handle... it still doesn't make the mouse track different though. the screen will redraw quicker, which can be easier on your eyes, but it won't make your cursor travel any different.

I don't blame you for thinking that ZPrime! But I've worked with high performance PCs for professional gaming for a number of years now, and I've very familiar with monitor refresh and device polling rates so I can assure you I'm not on the pipe (at least not for this discussion)

Notice that I never said that changing the setting actually changes the physical refresh rate of the LCD screen, and of course it does not. But give this a try with the default Ultranav driver: Put your mouse pointer speed to fastest (slider all the way to the right) and turn on enhanced mouse precision. Now, position your mouse on the very far left of the screen, and sweep it all the way to the right quickly. At this setting and at 1600x1200, you'll notice that it takes your finger nearly the entire width of the touchpad to get the cursor to travel the entire length of the screen, depending on how fast you move becuase of the acceleration of course.

Now, go to your display properties and set your default monitor (LCD) refresh rate to 120Hz and hit apply. The screen will refresh, and of course it'll still be outputing 60hz hardwired to the display. However, do the same experiment and I'm betting you'll find that the mouse travels the entire length of the screen with almost half the effort. There are a likely and logical explanation for why this happens, but right now I'm just throwing it out there for people who like having mouse acceleration but find the default windows mouse speed too slow (mainly for us UXGA types, who have more screen real estate to cross).

For reference, I'm running:
Catalyst 6.14.10.6422 (5/13/04)
Default Synaptics Ultranav driver 7.5.17.8 (11/19/2003)
Mouse hardware sample rate 200 report/sec
Import buffer length 120 packets