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This little beauty is my first ever non-desktop computer. Any time I’ve used someone’s laptop, they had a mouse.
So… I’m a bit embarrassed to ask this… are there any tricks to getting used to the trackpad? I can’t tell if it’s user error (most likely!) or this trackpad isn’t quite right and it just ignores me, but… I can’t always get the cursor to move at all or it will be jumpy, and then it will work fine, and then not at all, and I don’t know if it’s me or…
I saw there is a “tutorial” that brings up a maze, and it just laughed at me when I attempted it.
Any advice, suggestions? Am I pressing too hard, too soft? Fingers too cold? Something?
Please help! 🙂
Thank you!
It takes some getting used to if your use to a mouse but you dont need to press to hard at all, if you find its a little slow and you spend more time moving your fingers than the cursor does move then you can change the settings by either right clicking on the icon on the task bar or going to control panel, mouse and i think its the second or third tab that says pointer speed. Its normally set to the middle if you move it to the right it should speed up and become easier to move (lee movement of your fingers) to speed it up even further you can unclick the encance pointer accuracy. but this can make it harder to pinpoint things if you are not used to it. Have a play around is the best thing and see what suits you
Like the The Ring said, it just takes getting used to. The horizontal and vertical scrolling edges of the track pad do come in handy. I’m a fan of the chiral scrolling (circular motion to scroll up or down).
I’m not sure whether you know this already, but if you are having specific problems with your touchpad then you can at least tweak the settings by going to the Start/Control Panel/ Mouse/ area, then click on the tab to the far right (‘Device Settings’). There will be a button marked ‘settings’. This controls the details of how your mouse reacts to you. You can change the sensitivity i.e change how much pressure is required, how often it will ‘ignore’ movement presuming you to be typing, which gestures are activated, whether you want the trackpad to emulate a trackball using the ‘momentum’ feature…. the list goes on so I’ll leave it to you to explore. If you just play around with those for a while then you will settle down into what works for you.
More generally, to start with I would sugget slowing the touchpad down. To do this you actually go to a different tab in ‘Mouse’ that is the Pointer options, 3rd from the right. In here you will see ‘pointer speed’ I would set it slowish to begin with, there is nothing more irratating than trying to control a pointer that jumps around the screen. After you get a bit more used to it, whack up the speed and you will be cruising. It just takes a while. It took me a day or two (as it is quite small) but now I’m totally adjusted to it and find it very efficient.
Hope this helps somewhat. If it is all blindingly obvious to you, then apologies, but I hope it points you in the right direction.
Thank you all! I’m much more comfortable with it… it still sticks out its tongue now and again, but for the most part cooperates. Though… I think it is training me, rather than the other way around! 😉
Serendip; Theres a program that might be of interest to you – I’ve posted details of which in the Applications forum on this site. It’s entitled 2 Finger Scrolling.
Essentially it makes the trackpad that much more useable – and saves you having to get used to (or confused by) the side scrolling regions dedicated to that purpose by default. I personally have always used a mouse prior to this little netbook – so was in the same boat as you in a way – and find the program makes life a lot easier.
Thank you, jonbad! I’ve noted the link, and will download and play with it. I’m all for easier life!
Hey everyone, one other tip in case anyone was trying to make scrolling smoother. If you go to the track ball settings then change it from ‘3 lines’ per increment to ‘1 line’ per increment it makes the side bar scrollling, including that twirly version, very good. At first I thought the computer was having difficulties in rendering the web page, but, joy of joys, no. It was just the trackpad setting :-).
Hope it helps someone.
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