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.
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.
I'm mostly with you, but I don't feel the need for separate mouse buttons, so long as the touchpad can give me feedback on clicks. If the whole touchpad is the button, and two finger clicks work for right click, then that's all right. Took some getting used to, but it works fine now. Tap to click though, I've never got that to not be annoying.
I've tried the clickpads. Requiring a more deliberate action to click is good; requiring an absurd amount of force compared to what's needed to push a mouse button is bad. And the "hinged" feeling where it's obviously attached on only one side feels bad, as well.
It's possible that a much better clickpad could be usable, where it's anchored in a non-hinged fashion so it pushes evenly, and the force required to click is comparable to a mouse button.
Not sure exactly which company you are referring to, but Apples clickpads haven’t had any moving parts for a long time—there is just a force sensor and a physical actuator to make it vibrate when tapped that makes it feel as if it moved. But it does not actually move, so there’s nothing to push unevenly about it. It can be a bit uncanny to use when the machine is powered off since the haptic feedback is designed just to trick the brain into thinking it moved.
Those aren't "clickpads"; they don't click. Some of the older ones had a "force touch" where you could push harder to do something different, but the amount of force required for that seemed excessive.
I'm talking about a touchpad that physically actuates like a button.
Gotcha. I remember those not working well.
I believe all newer models still do that too since 2016, but just not the UI (force touch was mostly only on phones in my recollection). It can be used as a fairly accurate kitchen scale even: https://github.com/KrishKrosh/TrackWeight
Agreed on all points.
I have on my desk an old IBM M4-1 keyboard (compact keyboard with trackpoint), a mighty mouse (the one with the track ball in it) and a mac laptop with a touchpad. I think this gives me access to nearly all the input widgets available except maybe a chorded keyboard or foot pedals. For a while I actually had 2 keyboards on my desk and sometimes I'd type all on one, all on the other, or sometimes left hand on one and right hand on the other. When I moved to WFH mostly I got rid of the second keyboard (and switched to the M4-1) because my home office isn't all that large.
I use them all at probably random ratios as the mood and task suit me.
I also use a single 30 inch 16:10 monitor.
Everyone else in my family hates this setup.
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.
> 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.
> 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.