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Comment by mduerksen | Hacker News Reader

Any serious contender should have an answer to the MBPs extraordinary touchpad. It is key to working without a mouse, and therefore being truly mobile and comfortable at the same time.

So please post at least some information for this aspect, which is one of the things the OP explicitly listed.

Some examples:

- Would you be able to do some solid Photoshop/Sketch/Gimp/Inkscape/Blender work with the touchpad/knob of your proposed MBP-replacement?

- Can you comfortably and efficiently organize your photos/files&folders with it?

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Are people really working in Photoshop/Sketch/Gimp/Inkscape/Blender using the trackpad? Sounds extraordinarily inefficient compared to using a mouse.

Yes, me at least (design work is not my main profession but needed for creating e.g. mobile apps).

It was my biggest surprise when I first bought a macbook: After a few weeks I noticed I didn't miss a mouse enough to bother bringing one with me.

I do 95% of my work when I'm commuting by train. Only for the last 5% super involved work I have to resort to plugging in a mouse when I'm in the office.

With all other laptops I have ever dealt with (admittedly not the replacements proposed in this thread), the ratio would be more like 50:50 or worse.

I also had a pretty high quality trackpoint from a business line Dell. Still missed the mouse.

That's why I like my Thinkpad X1 Yoga. Depending on the operation, I will use the touchpad, the trackpoint, or the touchscreen.

I've got an Asus C302 Flip Chromebook, and the touchpad on it is as good as the Mac touchpad. It's just a shame that this machine is so underpowered, because it would be absolutely perfect with an i5, m.2 SSD, and 20g of RAM.

What I do now is set up virtual desktops on my server and connect to it via Chrome Remote Desktop from the C302. I have a Thinkpad for when I need to travel, but it really sucks having to switch back to a mouse (the touchpad on that thing is horrible).

The technical requirement I see as a prerequisite would be support for the Precision Touchpad standard. That's a major part of the magic inside Mac Touchpads. It's a shame there isn't that many external Precision Touchpad hardware. Users would pay a lot more attention to touch if so. That said, at least there's a Windows Precision Touchpad driver for the Magic Trackpad 2:

https://github.com/imbushuo/mac-precision-touchpad/issues

Has anyone tried magic touchpad on linux? Theres a driver but I wonder if its as smooth as a MBP trackpad on linux.

I find that a touchscreen (which most non-Apple laptops have) compensates to some degree for the inferior touchpad.

I can't stand track/touchpads - I just turn them off. Give me a good trackpoint any day.

I don't necessarily care if it's a point or pad. I need it to get the jobs done that I mentioned above.

Can you with your laptop, and if so, which is it?

I had a Dell Precision M4300 for quite some time. Good laptop, decent trackpoint - but it was not good enough for design work:

My main problem was offsetting the cursor a tiny number of pixels, which needed some starting force on the trackpoint, which lead to more pixels than I needed. Some trackpoint laptop might have figured this out by now. But if not, I'm not interested.

There are dozens of us! I've tried to get comfortable with touchpads, but I always find them frustrating (yes, even MBP touchpads). For instance, selecting text with them is a disaster. Trackpoint or external mouse for me.

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