touchpad
I just wonder, how does the touchpad detect your tap? Does it detect by pressure?
I tried to tap it with my fingernail, it didn't respond. It only respond if I tap if with my finger tip.
I am using synaptics touchpad in a lenovo notebook, but I think manufacturer doesn't matter.
The touchpad and the click pad are two different things. The Synaptics touchpad is your normal, everyday touchpad you are used to seeing on a lot of pc laptops like HP, Dell, etc. A couple of years ago, I purchased a HP pavillion m6 (Don't recall the entire name), and just like the second poster mentioned, it did have a shortcut conveniently located in the upper left hand corner of the mouse pad. The touchpad also usually come with the standard two buttons at the bottom of the pad to be used for left and right clicking.
The click pad is another laptop mouse pad except this time there are no left and right buttons at all because the entire pad clicks when you press on the bottom left or bottom right side of the pad. I actually prefer this to the touchpad...but I was also disappointed to see the shortcut in the top left corner disappear.
I'm not thoroughly positive if I understood the OP with respect to where exactly you looked. You mentioned that you went into control panel and then went to the synaptics icon and clicked on it. That will bring you into a window labeled "Properites for Synaptics ClickPad". You will be treated to little animations and also very brief descriptions as to what each gesture can do and how you are to execute the gesture if you would like it to work. In this window you can disable the gestures you're unhappy with. Another thing anyone having a similar issue could do is to click on "Smart Sense". The more you slide the slider to the right, the more the clickpad will somehow ignore mistaken touches when the palms of your hands are touching while typing. It doesn't work perfectly, but you might just be surprised at just how effective it can actually be.
Finally, in Windows 10, if you go into control panel and then click on "Mouse", the window will open to display 6 mouse/navigation/clickpad related tabs. By default this window opens all the way to the right tab which just happens to be a tab called, "ClickPad Settings". If you look in the middle of the window, you will notice a little checkbox labeled, "Disable internal pointing device when external USB pointing device is attached. Hope this helps anyone wondering about this particular topic.
NOTE: This answer is outdated. You don't need to modify the driver configuration file to enable Momentum anymore. You can simply change the relevant DWORD values at the following registry keys to enable/disable Momentum and a host of other features.
To enable Momentum, set Momentum_Enable and Momentum_Display to 1. You can find them in the registry keys listed below.
For Windows 10:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Elantech\SmartPadDisplay
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Elantech\SmartPad
After doing this, Momentum or 'Inertia' related settings will start showing up in the 'Elan Smart-Pad' application that lets you configure various features of the touchpad.
I finally figured out how to enable Momentum (called Inertia in Elantech touchpads) as well as a host of other hidden features in ELAN manufactured touchpads.
Thanks to this blog post, I found out that the way to do this was to edit Elantech drivers (ETD.inf). If you're using WHQL inbox drivers, you'll probably have to downgrade to older Elantech drivers for this to work.
Make sure that the touchpad drivers you have include a setup.exe file so you can install the drivers. You'll also have to run Windows in Test Mode with integrity checks disabled so you can install the modded drivers. To restart Windows in Test Mode, run the command prompt as administrator and enter the following commands:
bcdedit -set loadoptions DISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS bcdedit -set TESTSIGNING ON
Uninstall the previous touchpad drivers and make sure you check the Delete the driver software for this device box
Now open ETD.inf in the Elantech drivers folder with a decent text editor (I recommend Notepad++) and change all instances of
Momentum_Display,%REG_DWORD%,0
to
Momentum_Display,%REG_DWORD%,1
Also change the first instance of (you'll find this in the [ETD_SmartPadUI_Default.AddReg] section)
Momentum_Enable,%REG_DWORD%,0
to
Momentum_Enable,%REG_DWORD%,1
If you'd like the cursor to bounce off of screen edges, then change:
Momentum_Bounce_Enable,%REG_DWORD%,0
to
Momentum_Bounce_Enable,%REG_DWORD%,1
There are lots of other options you can enable/disble as well. However, I'll leave it to you to experiment with them. You'll find the most interesting settings in the following sections:
[ETD_SmartPadDisplay_Default.AddReg] [ETD_SmartPadDisplay_Win8.AddReg] [ETD_SmartPadUI_Default.AddReg]
WARNING: Make sure you know exactly what you're doing here or you could end up with an unstable driver and lots of BSODs. I recommend making a backup of the original drivers before you start to modify them.
After you've finished editing the drivers, reboot your computer and install the new modded drivers by running setup.exe
Best Answer
Basically there are two types of touchpads (same technology is used for touchscreens too).
There are resistive touchpads and capacitive touchpads.
I'll start with the resistive touchpads first, because they're easier to explain. On a resistive touchpad, you have a series of parallel wires and on top of that another series of parallel wires which are perpendicular to the bottom layer. They form the matrix from which the input is received.
Here's a picrure of how that works on a touchscreen, but on touchpads, the result is same:
When the touchpad is pressed, two films contact each-other and based on the location of their contact, coordinates can be calculated. Also if pressure calculation is needed, resistance of the wires is measured and in that way, exact pressure can be determined. With higher pressure, contact between the plates is better and resistance is lower.
This type of touch sensors will work with any pressure source sufficient to bent the film and make contact between the plates. As far as I know, this type of technology is no longer in use for laptop touchpads.
The second type of touchpads (and touchscreens) is capacitive.
There are two popular types of this type of touchpad.
First uses a matrix of wires which looks same as the one in resistive touchpads, but is not flexible. To explain how it works, we need a bit of theory on electric field.
Here we have electric field between two charged plates:
Situation is similar with the case where we have wires. When a piece of material which will have considerable impact on the electric field is brought in the field of the capacitor formed at the location where the two layers intersect, it will affect the capacitance of the capacitor. This change can be detected an measured. The closer the finger is to the node, bigger effect will be and so you can get pressure measurements too.
The second type of sensor is used on both touchpads, touchscreens and as "flat" buttons now commonly seen on various devices.
It has instead of two layers of parallel wires a grid of small pads where one is transmitter and the other is receiver. They form capacitors and when finger or other material which affects electric field is brought near, the capacitance will change. This change can be detected and measured and this way location of the finger (o other material which affects the electric field) can be detected.
The capacitive sensors are supposed to have higher reliability than resistive sensors (no moving parts), have higher precision and not be affected by various objects other than a finger which may be placed on them.