First, a brief introduction. The ClickPad looks a whole lot like the button-less touchpads on Apple's new MacBooks, but with a twist. Apple based its clicking mechanism on a hinge at the top, so you're really supposed to click with your thumb at the bottom of the tracking area. Synaptics, meanwhile, built the ClickPad using a scissor-switch mechanism that lets you click anywhere on the surface with the same amount of pressure.
That may sound like a small difference, but it should change the usage model quite dramatically. Where the Apple design works like any old touchpad, the ClickPad lets you click down wherever your finger is, sort of like a tap-to-click mode on steroids. To right click, just click down with two fingers.
Synaptics shows off buttonless clicking for netbooks touchpads
Posted on Tuesday, June 09 2009 @ 1:30 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
The Tech Report reports Synaptics introduced a buttonless clicking system for netbook touchpads at Computex: