
Microsoft to Require Precision Touchpads in Future Windows 10 Laptops - dvdhnt
https://www.slashgear.com/microsoft-is-about-to-fix-windows-laptops-biggest-frustration-26468799/
======
wluu
Microsoft should release their own multi-touch touchpad with this tech and
call it the Surface Touchpad or something along those lines. Basically their
equivalent of the Apple Magic Trackpad. It's what I miss when I've got my
Surface Book docked, having come from a MBP/Magic Trackpad setup.

~~~
BillinghamJ
The trackpads built into the Surface computers are still nowhere near the
level of Apple's.

~~~
basch
the Pro and Book have completely different trackpads.

~~~
BillinghamJ
I have used both.

------
innocentoldguy
One of the biggest reasons I stopped using PCs, and started using Macs, was
the quality of Apple's touchpads. I recently had to work with a new Dell, and
was sad to see that things hadn't improved much during the last 10 years.
Seriously, what manufacturer could possibly compare a Mac to their PC offering
and find that crap acceptable? I hope this push by Microsoft will result in a
more Mac-like touchpad experience for PC users.

~~~
Sephr
How "new" are we talking here? Dell's XPS line has had precision touchpads
since the beginning of 2015.

~~~
bicubic
Even Microsoft's own flagship Surface Book has a touch pad which is abysmal
compared to what MBP offered on it's debut. I constantly experience issues
ranging from jerky movements to completely failing to scroll until rebooted on
my Surface Book. It's mind blowing that this still happens in 2016.

~~~
chokolad
You probably have a faulty device. Swing by Microsoft store if you have one
nearby and show them those issues. I have no problems with mine.

~~~
0xcoffee
Actually I agree with him. The touchpads on the xps and MacBook are similar in
optimal conditions, but the XPS one seems way more sensitive to sweat/oils
from the hand and then stops working until it is cleaned. I have hyperhydrosis
so my hands sweat alot, never caused an issue on my MacBook, but the XPS
doesn't handle it as well.

On the software side, the MacBook can also handle finger movements quickly
followed by a tap much better, while on the XPS if you do really quick
movements followed by a tap the cursor will jump back a little. (Annoyingly
enough to accidentally hit the close tab button when trying to switch tabs). I
reported this to dell and they said the issue lies in the MS driver.

------
symlinkk
What is a Precision Touchpad? Is it some sort of Microsoft designed touchpad?
Is it a certain bar the laptop manufacturers have to meet in order to call
their touchpads "Precision"?

~~~
gruez
>Precision Touchpad made its debut with Windows 8. Co-developed between
Microsoft and touchpad company Synaptics, the spec changed how Windows works
with touchpads. Traditionally, touchpads masqueraded to Windows as essentially
USB- or PS/2-connected mice—simple two-dimension, single-input devices.
Features such as multitouch and gestures were handled by a combination of the
touchpad firmware and proprietary drivers. This meant that Windows itself had
no ability to add new gestures or refine the finger-detection algorithms; it
was all an opaque feature of the third-party drivers.

>With Precision Touchpad, the raw touchpad input is exposed to Windows itself,
allowing the operating system to choose how it handles the complex multi-
finger inputs. The gestures, the disambiguation of taps and swipes—these are
all now performed by Windows, not a third-party driver.

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/pc-oems-ditch-the-
cus...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/pc-oems-ditch-the-custom-
touchpad-drivers-give-us-precision-touchpad/)

~~~
lewisl9029
Wow. I hope this means we can finally have a separate set of sensitivity &
acceleration settings for touchpads vs mice.

------
jacquesc
This seems like a great move to me. I started using a 2016 Razer Stealth, and
the worst thing about it is the Synaptics Touch crapware they include to
configure the touch pad.

~~~
therein
How is the trackpad otherwise, though?

~~~
jacquesc
Trackpad is excellent. My only gripe would be the configuration software /
drivers they include.

------
wyclif
My wife has a brand-new Lenovo ThinkPad with Windows 10, and the touchpad is a
total disaster. Now, this shouldn't be interpreted as PC haterade: until
fairly recently I was a big ThinkPad guy (but with Linux), and switched to
MacBook Pro only after they went Intel. But these touchpads on the new
ThinkPads are cheap and tacky. I can't imagine having to use one every day.

So any effort PC/Win laptop makers are taking to improve things is welcome. I
doubt they'll ever be as good as the touchpads on Apple hardware, though.

~~~
ch_123
FWIW - On the last Thinkpad I bought (the X220) the touchpad was notably worse
under than Windows with the official vendor drivers compared with Linux using
whatever came out of the box. Two finger scrolling comes to mind - on Linux it
worked smoothly, but with Windows, there was a considerable lag between me
scrolling on the touchpad, and scrolling actually happening in the
application.

~~~
marcoperaza
I've noticed the same thing with my T530. The Windows drivers for the Thinkpad
also don't let you set the middle trackpoint button to middle-click. There was
a way to get it to work by editing the registry, but that's stopped working in
recent versions too. I don't understand why Lenovo keeps putting out user-
hostile driver updates for Windows. I don't see how it benefits Lenovo, so I
guess it's just total incompetence.

And yeah, just like you, I find the default behavior under both Fedora and
Ubuntu to be _perfect_.

~~~
yummysoup
check out tpmiddle to get the trackpoint middle button to middle click on
press, and still scroll when you hold it down and move the trackpoint:
[http://users.v-lo.krakow.pl/~mwrobel/programs/tpmiddle.html](http://users.v-lo.krakow.pl/~mwrobel/programs/tpmiddle.html)

------
magaman69
precision touchpads are useless if the software doesnt support it. the
trackpad in the surface pro is not very smooth when scrolling in chrome.

~~~
chrismorgan
In platform-specific matters like this (text rendering, input handling, _&
c._), Microsoft has always led the way in IE or now Edge, Mozilla following
after a while (admittedly often years) in Firefox, and Chrome typically
_years_ later. Firefox and Edge handle precision touch very well; Chrome…
well, it’s _OK_ these days. But definitely not great.

I’m still waiting for Firefox or Chrome to actually implement the Pointer
Events API _properly_. Edge does exactly what I expect, Firefox does _almost_
everything as I expect, Chrome is simply terrible. And only Edge supports
pressure sensitivity, so the Surface Pen only has full utility on Edge.

------
zarify
I haven't tried the Surface Book, but you're lucky if you can even fit three
or more fingers on the trackpads on the Surface Pro. Maybe MS could show some
leadership there as well.

~~~
Arainach
Are you looking at the original 2012 Surface Pro? The SP4 has a trackpad
roughly as large as the Macbook Pro, as does the Surface Book.

~~~
ClassyJacket
I don't believe that's correct. Look at a Surface Pro trackpad next to a
MacBook Pro trackpad.

[http://i.imgur.com/rynFtJQ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/rynFtJQ.jpg)

The MacBook Pro Trackpad is 206% of the size of the Surface Pro 4 trackpad.
Literally double the size.

~~~
rbanffy
That's a bit unfair. The MBP you compare it to was almost literally launched
last week.

------
rbanffy
Any word on Linux support for this kind of hardware?

~~~
abrowne
They're already out there, such as in the Dell XPS 13. IIRC some of the
features work better with libinput.

~~~
rbanffy
I wonder if I can use gestures like I do on macOS for things like switching
desktops.

~~~
abrowne
I haven't tried them, but I've come across a few libinput gesture drivers:

[https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-
gestures](https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures)
[https://github.com/iberianpig/fusuma](https://github.com/iberianpig/fusuma)

------
AbraKdabra
Well I'm pretty happy with this kind of things, I recently bought an MSI GT72S
and the trackpad is a 5/10 for a whopping $2400 notebook, never had one before
but used a Macbook for about 2 months and it was beautiful, in that time I
never felt the need of a mouse.

------
cm2187
I am surprised to see the Latitude 14 in the list of laptops with precision
touchpads. Fingerprint readers and touchpad aren't a strength of the latitude
laptops I owned so far.

~~~
hiram112
I was interested too with the Latitudes. The article is vague, but it does
mention _latest_ models.

I just picked up an e7440 - new but a few generations old - from the Dell
business outlet. The touchpad (along with the battery) is the biggest weak
point of the laptop. It works somewhat okay with Win 10, but it is awful on
Linux using recent kernels on Fedora 25.

But I tend to use a MBP at work, and the touchpad on it is just so much
better. I don't even bother with a mouse with the Mac as OSX really integrates
the trackpad well. I am much happier with a decent wireless mouse with the
Latitude.

