:(

Published February 04, 2006
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My journal has been pushed out of the front page.
Guys, stop updating...

So I discovered something new. Yesterday on the bus ride back to Toronto (takes 1.5 hours) I tried to do some programming on my laptop.
Generally when coding, you really need the mouse separate from the keyboard, but obviously I couldn't connect my wireless mouse in the bus due to space restrictions.

Anyway, the pad thingy below the keyboard is extremely annoying: I'm typing, and somewhere in the middle it decides that I have probably clicked - or dragged - the mouse while moving my hands across the keyboard, and the I end up typing the rest of what I was doing in middle of another chunk, possibly replacing some parts of the code.

Also, the bus shakes so much that using the pad is almost impossible since your finger is shaking all over the place.

I ended up disabling the mouse and using keyboard shortcuts everywhere.
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0 likes 10 comments

Comments

aidan_walsh
Those finger pads tend to be beyond useless anyway, regardless of whether you're moving or not.
February 04, 2006 11:30 AM
Ravuya
On OS X they have a feature to disable the trackpad for "accidental input". I don't know how it determines that, but it seems to work. I'm sure there must be a similar program for Win and Linux available.
February 04, 2006 12:13 PM
jollyjeffers
I hate those trackpad things for the same reason. Used to do work on my thinkpad when on the train, and it'd be a millionaire if I got a £ for each time I accidentally deleted/inserted/clicked something [oh]

Quote:On OS X they have a feature to disable the trackpad for "accidental input". I don't know how it determines that, but it seems to work. I'm sure there must be a similar program for Win and Linux available.
One of the MS guys was saying that the tablet version of Vista will have this built in. I guess the tablet tracking/writing technology is pretty similar (at least from the software side). If I remember correctly it was some fancy pattern recognition - the palm/edge of your hand creates different signals to your fingertip/pen.

Jack
February 04, 2006 12:59 PM
Rob Loach
I like IBM's red dot mouse system more then the pad thing:

February 04, 2006 01:23 PM
Rob Loach
I still love you.
February 04, 2006 06:34 PM
Pouya
I have both the thumbtrack thing and the pad
And yes, it has the feature for accidental input, it basically detects if there's a lot of pressed spotson the pad, and if there is, it'll assume that was your wrist and not the finger.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work very well, because most of the accidental input is either from my left thumb that is not doing anything at all, or lightly brushing my wrist against it where there's only a small touch on the pad and it won't notice that it wasn't my finger.
February 04, 2006 08:24 PM
ArchWizard
The pad thingy is called a "Touchpad." Lore Sjoberg says that the red dot thingy is a "laptop nipple," although he admits that he coined the phrase himself.
February 04, 2006 08:36 PM
dwarfsoft
Personally I would call it a laptop clitoris, because there is only one of them, and you have to move your fingers around it in circles in order to stimulate some response from the laptop. Not to mention its about the same size and shape... and if only that red faded to a little more pinky colour :P
February 06, 2006 08:21 PM
Pouya
But it's right there in front of my eyes. I don't need to "find" it first
February 06, 2006 09:54 PM
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