[klibertp]

> In no way am I trying to incite Mac vs. PC

Oh, but you're doing it anyway. Whatever, sounds like fun! ;)

> I quite literally felt like I had a degenerative neuromuscular disease when I used the trackpad

[EDIT: I should mention that I'm using almost exclusively keyboard for interacting with my computers, so I may be missing some obvious things.]

I'm using mac book pro and some hp notebook (both a year and a half old at this point) and I don't feel any difference in how the touchpads in them work. Aside from the mac's one being overloaded with functions which shouldn't be there (for me ofc).

What exactly was a difference that make you feel like that? Maybe it was something that could be easily remedied by switching some options?

[quinndupont]

I tried ALL of the internal Lenovo-supplied utilities, and even "upgraded" to a generic driver provided by Synaptics (maker of the trackpad hardware). Moving the mouse cursor around the screen was usually not a problem, but scrolling and click-and-drag (to say, move a file using the GUI) would only actually work about 70% of the time. Instead of scrolling it would stutter and zing about, and instead of click and drag it would pick up the file and drop it some other place. It's actually a bit hard to describe, since it actually made me genuinely wonder if there was something wrong with my hand/brain. Tiny little errors for such a critical thing really do cause havoc.

[skunkvomit]

I found that Windows configuration (Synaptics and Lenovo) utilities were all lacking in configurability. I have primarily switched to Linux (openSUSE) which has far better support for common two-finger scrolling and right-clicking as well as more configurable for the sensitivity, palm detection, etc.

I couldn't believe how much better my Thinkpad Edge touchpad worked under Linux, and the trackpoint nub was able to be sped up and adjusted so its my preferred means of movement when typing. So I think there's something to be said for both hardware and software (and drivers) which affect the final user experience; unfortunately there seems to be less concern or attention towards that aspect with PCs than Macs.

[pyk]

There have been some really really awful Lenovo Thinkpad trackpads in the last 2-3 years -- one specific one that I have used that you see a TON of complaints about was the X230 trackpad (google it, it's a mess). One of the worst I have ever used, with no amount of adjustment that can fix it -- Lenovo really dropped the ball when cutting costs. The worst part was that the X220/T420 and plenty of other older models had perfect trackpads.