“Inspired” by Apple

Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A: Check out The Verge’s review of this hot piece of ass (great name, by the way, not to be confused with the UX31A). I bet they got the trackpad right this time:

Now, the moment of truth: did Asus fix the touchpad issues that sullied the original? Yes and no. Mostly no. In fact, Asus has changed up the trackpad quite a bit, and it doesn’t jump around during use. The touchpad (an Elan model) is fairly quick and accurate with a single finger, although the company’s new, tackier glass touchpad surface can keep your digits from traveling smoothly if you’re light on finger oil. I prefered the texture of the original.

But - BUT - there’s more:

The problems are these: scrolling through webpages and documents with two-finger swipes is a stuttery mess (ditto pinch-to-zoom), and more importantly, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of competent palm rejection to keep the cursor from traveling while you’re typing. See these paragraphs in front of your eyes? I typed every one on this machine, and just about every single one of them was abruptly chopped apart by my mouse pointer when my palms accidentally brushed the trackpad. Infinite monkey theorem could be disproven by the touchpad on this Zenbook.

“Fairly quick and accurate”.

“LOL”.

(image from - where else? - The Verge)

Samsung Series 9 Trackpad: Looks familiar. Surely, surely - surely - they will have made it work just as well as the one on the MacBook Pro? Surely?

What do you think? Here’s The Verge:

The Elan pad has a nice smooth physical surface, and most Windows gestures work pretty well, including the critical two-finger scrolling (complete with inertia) and both three- and four-finger swipes for multitasking maneuvers. Still, it’s not nearly as responsive as I’d like, and using it is a bit of a chore. Compared to a MacBook or some of the better Windows laptops we’ve used, tap-to-click has a slight delay, pinch to zoom is extremely awkward, and, most importantly, plain ol’ cursor tracking (you know, just moving around your pointer) feels abnormally slow even with the sensitivity turned up. It’s servicable and I’ve used far worse, and Samsung says the drivers may improve from here on out. The laptop doesn’t ship until April, and I’m already using drivers that are at least one revision newer than the original.

Well that sounds FUCKING EXCELLENT, doesn’t it? As Lord Gruber pointed out in relation to the Dell XPS 13 “good thing you don’t need to use the trackpad much on a notebook.” See also the HP Envy 15.

(image from The Verge)