New Laptop Help!! Touchpad question.

[JE78]

I'm looking to purchase a new windows 10 laptop. Here's my issue, I need a touch pad that works like a Surface Book. I'm totally confused as to why some laptops have for example 4 finger swipe left/right for the virtual desktop. I was at Best Buy today and only found a handful of laptops that have this feature and it seems to only be the high priced ones....go figure. Surface Book and Lenovo Yoga 910 seem to work the best. The weird part is, the other Lenovo Yoga notebooks don't have this. From what I can tell the other Yoga's have the touch pad controlled by software and the 910 and surface book the touch pad is controlled by windows. Anyone know if there is a work around for this?

 

[giantpandaman2]

There's no workaround that I know of. Just make sure you buy a laptop with "Precision Trackpad" that follows Microsoft's protocols. There are more than a few that do. They are, as you noted, usually the more expensive ones though.

 

[JE78]

Thanks for the clarification. Weird why all companies won't go that route.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Weird why all companies won't go that route.

Possibly because of concerns about backwards-compatibility / compatibility with alternate OSes (including OEM ChromeBook builds on the same hardware platform)?

I know that my Acer Cherry Trail netbook, has an option in the UEFI, for enabled the "advanced" trackpad features (like gestures), and if I enable it, Linux won't see the trackpad at all.

 

[JE78]

From what I read MS has to approve the touch pad to make sure it meets certain standards. Makes sense I suppose.