Q

The best touchpad

Learn the perfect way of improving the surface of your touchpad.

Gipsy time...

I moved to another city and I'm staying in different places until I find an apartment to rent/buy, which means that I won't have my beautiful desk for a while. Mouse is not always an option in this situation so I went back to the touchpad. I own an Asus Zenbook (UX51VZ) which has the worst touchpad I have ever used so far. It's a shame that an expensive laptop like this one has such a crappy touchpad. Overall it's a nice laptop, but it's not worth the money that I paid. Anyway, I have tried different options to improve the touchpad's performance with no success, until now :-)


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In a relative's house, where I'm staying during this month, I found some sticky notes with a similar size of my touchpad. I put one over the touchpad and voilà… The paper has a nice texture so the finger slides quite easily. Also, because the paper is very thin, I can't feel any difference with sensitivity. The idea is to stick it at the top and keep it as flat as possible. After a week using the touchpad every day it still working fine. If it becomes oily I just have to change it. Below I includ the settings that I'm currently using for my Synaptic touchpad in Linux. That may also help.

TouchConfig

Two weeks after I found the sticky notes I thought about another alternative. I'm carbon wrapping my bike with 3M Di-noc vinyl (1080-CF12) and I thought to give it a try on my touchpad. I bought 1.5[Mt²] so I have plenty of material for experimenting. This is the result:


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Both alternatives are better than the original touchpad surface. Sticky notes are easy to find, cheap, easy to install and very thin. On the other hand Di-noc is more stylish and thicker than paper. You may loose some sensitivity but still easy to change touchpad sensitivity. The surface feels a bit oily, it's like snake skin, but the finger slides quite well. I'm not sure if the material will become wear quickly. I tried the sticky note for week, I'll give a couple of weeks to Di-noc.

If you live in USA you can try the Di-noc alternative for FREE. You just have to go to 3M website and order samples of their products at no cost. You get a few colors and textures so you could try different surfaces and choose the best one for you. Size of samples are big enough to wrap a touchpad and small objects.


14-07-2015

After a weeks using DiNoc over the touchpad I can say that I'm very happy. It's a bit more rough than the sticky note but it makes movements a bit easier. Also, because the whole surface is glued it's easier to use the touchpad with one hand as the paper bent it if I didn't use both hands. Overall is a good improvement and the touchpad is now usable. I had to increase the sensibility of the touchpad. This is my new configuration for Synaptic touchpad in LMDE.