please please *please* don't use a capacitive touchpad in the next round of hardware!

[dilinger]

Our current touchpad sucks rocks. Part of that is due to known hardware bugs. However, part of it is due to the fact that we're using a technology (capactive touchpad) which is incompatible with the environments that we're trying to use it in.

Capacitance + hot, humid climates is a known bad combination. If the new touchpad hardware is also capacitive, I fear people in these climates will find them unusable. AFAIK, the decision to use a new capacitive touchpad has already been made without evaluating alternatives; I fear that this is a huge mistake.

To quote others who've pointed out touchpad problems:

20:02  erikg> also problematic
20:02  erikg> is that people who work in fields tend to have calloused fingers
20:02  erikg> and have trouble with the touchpad as-is

20:06  smithbone> reports are they they have trouble with the pad even when 
                  non-jumpy.
20:07  smithbone> and thats a much larger movement than the fine motor control

Please consider switching to something not capacitive; a thinkpad-style trackpoint, or another type of resistive pad. Obviously, they'd need to be tested on actual kids first. I realize this is urgent, but capacitive touchpads are so awful..

[AlbertCahalan]

Thinkpad-style is good. Even if not easy under comfy office conditions, it beats a capacitative device in actual use conditions.

Kids love the stubby analog sticks found on game console controllers.

An optical tracball could work very well. (with a cut-out in the opposite side of the laptop to allow closing the laptop)

[wad]

I use the capacitive touchpad on my Mac in hot and humid environments without a problem. Perhaps the problem is in the implementation and not the theory ?

The current XO capacitive touchpad, on the other hand, definitely seems to exhibit some performance changes due to humidity. Kids use chalk on their fingers to fix problems, etc...

I assume that you are referring to the next generation, right? It is too late to move to an alternate technologies this year.