Crappy Clickpads Could Kill The Ultrabook

January 6th, 2012 by Mark Spoonauer, LAPTOP Editor in Chief  

In case you hadn’t heard, Ultrabooks are the next big thing for laptops. With their superslim designs and tablet-like responsiveness, this category has the potential to keep notebooks quite relevant in the so-called post-PC era. When you ask industry analysts what might prevent Ultrabooks from taking off, most will tell you their relatively high prices. But I believe there’s an even bigger obstacle: the clickpad.

What’s a clickpad, you ask? It’s a touchpad that lacks discrete mouse buttons. The buttons are built into the pad itself, which makes for a more seamless and sleek design. Apple nailed this technology a while ago on the MacBook Air. However, I’ve seen so many bad implementations of this technology on Windows machines that I shudder when I see one.

Here are the telltale signs of a crappy clickpad:

  • The jumpy cursor: Navigating around the screen shouldn’t feel like a chore, but with Ultrabooks such as the ASUS Zenbook UX31 the cursor would sometimes jump when we were trying to select an icon. At other times, the cursor would jump up a line while typing, due to accidental contact with the touchpad. If you can’t get the basics right, don’t bother.

  • Pinch to stutter: Anyone who has used an iPhone or Android device knows that pinching to zoom should be a smooth, continuous motion. However, on many Ultrabooks this action feels like you’re zooming in slow motion. Rotating can also be hit or miss. Perhaps Windows 8 will offer better built-in support for multitouch gestures, but right now it doesn’t feel natural at all.

  • Erratic scrolling: If you use a MacBook Air, you’ll find that scrolling up and down webpages and documents with two fingers is silky smooth. You don’t even have to think about it. On Windows-powered Ultrabooks, I often overshoot the target or I need to be very deliberate to initiate scrolling in the first place.

  • Right clicks out of nowhere: One night I decided to take the IdeaPad U300s home to see how well Lenovo’s Ultrabook worked, and I couldn’t wait to give it back. That’s because the system mistook a left click for a right one so often that I had a hard time getting any work done.

  • Annoying Stiffness: There is one thing that prevented us from giving the HP Folio 13 an Editors’ Choice Award, an otherwise great Ultrabook with best-in-class battery life. And that’s the stiff clickpad. We had to use too much force to activate the buttons.

 Of course, some clickpads are better than others, but right now they’re the worst thing about Ultrabooks. Yes, they give you more surface area for performing multitouch gestures, but if they don’t work the way they should then it’s just a wasted effort. It may seem old fashioned, but right now the Ultrabook with the best touchpad is the Toshiba Portege Z835. It uses two physical mouse buttons and they work just fine. 

If you’re looking to point fingers, the easy target would be Synaptics, which makes clickpads for Ultrabooks, including the Acer Aspire S3, Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, and HP Folio 13. The company says its image sensing technology allows for more precise navigation and sophisticated gesture recognition, but I haven’t been impressed thus far. Elan and Sentelic are among other clickpad makers. Ultrabook manufacturers bear some responsibility as well, because they’re the ones who implement the technology and make sure drivers work properly.

To me, though, the biggest culprit is Windows itself. Whereas Mac OS X is designed so that you need to double tap to launch contextual menus, Windows uses right clicks. That’s why you see so many Clickpads that leave room at the bottom for flat left and right buttons. Unfortunately, that adds another layer of complexity and sometimes leads to errant right clicks. Some people may hate this idea but Microsoft should just do away with the right mouse button option altogether in Windows 8 and make the two-finger click standard on notebooks.

Intel also needs to take a leadership role in ensuring that Ultrabooks measure up to certain ergonomic standards. After all, the chipmaker is spending $300 million to spur this category. In my mind, if you can’t deliver a satisfying user experience, you shouldn’t be able to call your laptop an Ultrabook, and you don’t get any marketing support.

Apple has a built-in advantage when it comes to touchpads because the company makes the hardware and the software. There are no middlemen. And if Ultrabook makers don’t raise their standards they’ll continue to play second fiddle to the MacBook Air.

Comments (9 Responses) 

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9 Responses to “Crappy Clickpads Could Kill The Ultrabook”

  1. MarcXW Says:
    January 6th, 2012 at 11:51 am

    I couldn’t agree more. I have an X1, and even though the clickpad isn’t terrible, every time I see a Macbook, I realize what I am missing out on. I prefer using the trackpoint anyway so it isn’t much of an issue for me, but when my friends try to use my laptop and they try using the clickpad, they always complain, rightfully. I am astonished that since their introduction, no manufacturer has managed to optimize the drivers properly.

  2. Jordan Says:
    January 6th, 2012 at 12:00 pm

    This is a very good issue to be discussed. I’m a pc user and prefer windows vs mac just because of i’m used to it. However the only reason why I would switch to mac is because of their clickpads. I believe that if I run windows on a macbook it’s going to be the best of both worlds but I’m going to wait to see if synaptics steps their game up.

  3. StickMan Says:
    January 6th, 2012 at 7:06 pm

    Another vote for the TrackPoint here, but mostly only the ones made by Lenovo (at least so far). The speed at which I work increases dramatically when using the TrackPoint, because I no longer have to take my hands off the keyboard. It’s amazing what a little piece of rubber is capable of. I wish more people would consider it.

    On the flip slide, I think other manufacturers’ pointing sticks can do well, if they can just fix the middle button hold-to-scroll and add some momentum to the scrolling. Having something like the Wet Banana Chrome plugin that works throughout the OS would dramatically improve the experience. If only there was a decent third party application that can enable this in Windows… Has anyone found one?

    …Oddly enough, the design and location of the pointing stick in the Fujitsu UH900 works well for me too (despite being an Alps stick, too!).

  4. Rawast.T Says:
    January 6th, 2012 at 11:37 pm

    Is Macbook’s track pad patented or something? Why can’t other companies buy a Macbook Air, rip it apart, and figure out how Apple builds it?

  5. MrG Says:
    January 7th, 2012 at 12:48 pm

    I have a HP Pavilion DV7. Its click pad is horrible in many ways. I have given up trying to use it and use a USB mouse all the time. How can they design such a nice machine and then smack a horrible input device on it?

    As an designer I’ve been waiting for 10 years for them to make a great tablet PC. I want to draw on my screen. This would do away with the click pad entirely. The wave of iPads etc. with touch screens makes me hopeful that soon laptop makers will see how much consumers like their pads and switch to the tablet format. It is obvious to me this is where tech will go eventually… we will see how much longer i need to wait.

  6. TD Says:
    January 7th, 2012 at 9:13 pm

    This is just nuts. The “solution” for Windows is to keep discrete buttons for crying out loud. They work. The right click menu also works. There is no need to make Windows touchpads the same as apple’s clickpads. The only thing that would accomplish is to make a productive system less productive. Oh yeah – I guess it would be more “COOL, MAN” like Apple. Right. The cool cult. I give a rat’s buhind. I like to get things done on my laptops, and you know what else works? The friggin page up and down buttons and the arrow keys. You don’t have to take your hands off the keyboard to use those either. God save us from “cool”.

  7. Zachary Bell Says:
    January 8th, 2012 at 12:52 am

    Yet another vote for TrackPoint and good ergonomics.

    Lenovo’s ThinkPad lines and Apple’s MacBooks get it right, while most of the others need to work on an alternative to a clickpad by itself.

    My cases for each:
    Lenovo ThinkPad: The TrackPoint UltraNav (yes, the little piece of rubber in the middle of ThinkPad keyboards). By having a usable pointing stick along with the clickpad or touch pad, my performance while using a laptop has improved and I won’t be going back to a single pointing device anytime soon.

    Apple: The designers and engineers at Apple just get it. Simplification is key for them, so they eliminate the right-click commands altogether, opting to use a multi-touch gesture instead. I would choose Apple as a first alternative to Lenovo, though a MacBook is more expensive than a 12″ or 14″ ThinkPad Edge.

    Both: The keyboards and pointing device designs are nearly flawless, although in their own unique way. On each, my typing speed has improved by two times when compared to popular consumer notebooks by Acer, Toshiba, Dell and HP.

    IMHO: I would take a ThinkPad Ultrabook, such as the X1 and T430U, and if that’s not available, then I’ll take a MacBook Pro 13″ (due to my need for an optical drive on a Mac).

  8. Tim O Says:
    January 13th, 2012 at 9:14 am

    I think this is an overreaction and a repeat of a common chorus on the internet lately. I have heard this complaint many times over the last few months now and so I have been specifically testing the so-called problems with these click-pads. I have have ((not)) experienced such issues that would prevent purchase. Also as far as price – Apple Air Book is pretty pricey if you have not noticed so that charge seems like a stretch. When buying an Ultrabook your paying for small compact and efficient mobile computer when a tablet just won’t do. Ultrabooks are the future for many and thanks to Apple for pushing the design threshold we all will benefit. Thats capitalism and market competition.

  9. Bassem Says:
    May 9th, 2012 at 7:17 am

    Clickpad is the future.
    Multi-gestures allow for a much improved productivity over standard trackpads with discrete buttons.
    I am currently a Macbook user. The two things that I miss in other laptops is the battery life and the trackpad. It is much superior to anything else I have used before and since.

    While the build-in multi-gestures controls of the Mac are impressive, I use a tool called BetterTouchTool (similar to Linux’ TouchEgg app, I believe) to allow me to completely customize gestures and actions. This allows for high productivity because, for example, you can switch between tabs using three finger gestures, and through different applications through four-finger gestures. Just google-search to see how amazing this is.

    Since I feel Macbooks are too expensive and I don’t really need OSX, I hope that other laptop manufacturers will embrace and improve clickpads, and that Windows 8 will improve on multi-gestures control.

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