I spend most of my time using a ThinkPad laptop touchpad, but the critical property that makes it usable for me is the physical mouse buttons. I find it incredibly awkward to use any system without physical mouse buttons, or any system where tap-to-click has not been disabled.

I tried, on my current laptop, to see if I could get used to having tap-to-click enabled even without actually using it; I wanted to see how far off I was from being able to deal with any non-ThinkPad. I ended up turning it back off after a few days, after many many clicks I didn't want to click.

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D13Fd 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My wife feels the same way as you. I guess everyone is different. To me, tap-to-click and two-finger right click feel the best by far.

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vladvasiliu 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why do you find this better? I find it awkward to have to contort my hand to hold the button down when dragging around. This was already the case with older trackpads with the buttons below, but now all trackpads with physical buttons I've seen have them above (probably intended for the trackpoint).

I really hate the hinge-style trackpads, but even on macs, I always enable tap to click and double-tap-drap to hold. On mac os and linux you can enable a "persistent hold for a short while" which allows to lift your finger briefly without losing the hold. Never found a similar setting on windows, which drives me crazy whenever I absolutely have to use that os.

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JoshTriplett 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> This was already the case with older trackpads with the buttons below, but now all trackpads with physical buttons I've seen have them above (probably intended for the trackpoint).

I think they're officially intended for the trackpoint, yes. But I find buttons-above convenient, because if I rest my arm/hand in a relaxed fashion on the laptop palm rest, I can use my pointer or middle finger for precise movement, and click with my middle or ring finger.

That said, I'd take buttons-below over no buttons. With buttons-below, I'm using my middle finger to mouse and my pointer finger to click, and that's still reasonably comfortable.

In both cases, I find it better because: clicking the button requires a deliberate action that won't happen by accident while using the touchpad; there's no delay required to confirm if touching the touchpad is a click something else, it's never a click; there's nothing timing-based at all, motion is motion and clicking is clicking; right-click and middle-click have dedicated buttons (I probably use middle-click many times more often than right-click on any given day, to open links in tabs and to close tabs).

This isn't something that could be solved with a better touchpad or better software.

	▲	vladvasiliu 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> if I rest my arm/hand in a relaxed fashion on the laptop palm rest, I can use my pointer or middle finger for precise movement, and click with my middle or ring finger. Huh, interesting. I just tried this, and it's indeed quite comfortable to use the index finger to operate the trackpad and the middle finger on the buttons. Middle + ring feels awkward to me, probably because of the size difference between my fingers. I suppose it never occurred to me to try it this way because I usually use my middle finger on the trackpad.