Invisible wrote:
>>
>> You must be joking! This sort of behaviour is what makes laptops
>> usable without a mouse.

No, it's what makes a laptop *faster* to use than a desktop.

> On the contrary - this is the number #2 reason for me always plugging a
> mouse in. (#1 is that, obviously, a glide pad is, what, 2 inches square?)

Sigh, learn to use the touchpad :p. What comes for the 2" square,
acceleration is absolutely needed option - fast move, long movement.
Correctly configured touchpad is fast and pretty accurate to use (yes, I
prefer normal mouse too, if I'll need to draw something).

>> Anyway, it's easy to avoid your problem on the Mac because the pointer
>> speed varies non-linearly with finger speed.
> 
> Ah-hah! Another thing I really hate... Makes it easy to move the pointer
> half way across the screen, but almost impossible to aim at a 1-pixel dot.

Wrong. Statically set fast speed would do this, but non-linear
acceleration feature doesn't.

Besides touchpad have "scrolling areas" - when you'll reach the end of
the touchpad, you hold your finger there and the cursor still moves,
until you raise your finger.

> Well, under Windoze the device driver for the glide pad lets you change
> it. I had assumed it's a software thing, but under SUSE the glide pad
> seems to malfunction in exactly the same way, so it must be hardware...

It's configurable also in Linux ;).

>> The other thing I like is scrolling the currently active window by
>> moving two fingers on the touchpad instead of one.

I prefer scrollbar on the side of the touchpad, so one finger is enough.
I'll never have to raise my hands from the keyboard when I'm using
laptop, since the touchpad is fully usable with thumbs (mostly the right
one - middle-click makes also left one needed).

> Ah, yet another thing I really hate about using the glide pad. "Oh, I
> accidentally touched the pad slightly too far to the side, now it thinks
> I want to *scroll* this window rather than point at the one behind it". >_<

If you miss a hit on a keyboard, it writes wrong letter...

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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