
Ask HN: Bad touchpads – hardware or software? - supermatou
Why are typical laptop touchpads so lousy, compared to those in Macbooks? Is it the cheap (i.e. less capable) hardware? That wouldn&#x27;t make sense to me: when you pay hundreds of dollars for a laptop, you&#x27;d be happy to pay a few (dozen?) dollars more for a quality touchpad and the manufacturers should know that.<p>Or is it the software - as in patents that prevent the manufacturers from offering the same smooth gestures with their drivers&#x2F;software?<p>Anyone have an authoritative explanation?
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tqh
It's mostly about bandwidth depending on how the device is connected inside
the computer (usb is much better than ps/2 or serial), polling frequency, and
software filtering raw data properly (duplicates and such). Some improvements
[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/c774326a219536ab615...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/c774326a219536ab615d68a22875673f6f608b62)

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PaulHoule
I'd rather save the dozen dollars and spend it on a mouse.

