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clickpads

Hands-on with the Synaptics ForcePad for Windows 8

Gearing up for the shift to Windows 8, Synaptics wants PC makers to switch to an entirely new kind of touchpad, called the ForcePad. We recently met with the company in New York to take this new touch interface, which eliminates moving parts and adds pressure sensitivity, for a test drive.

Synaptics invented the touchpad in 1995, and since then, touch has become an increasingly important part of our interaction with technology (and the company now makes touch screens for phones, tablets, and laptops as well).

But laptop touchpads have also been a frequent pain point for consumers, with laggy … Read more

Touch pad of the future: Hands-on with Synaptics' ClickPad Series 3.0

For all the advancements laptops have made, the humble touch pad has been essentially running the same hardware and software for years.

When you get right down to it, laptops only consist of a few key parts as far as user interface is concerned. Keyboard, screen, speakers--and, of course, the touch pad. With multitouch tablets and smartphones changing the interface landscape drastically, it's quickly becoming a multitouch world, and computers are the devices playing catch-up. Synaptics, makers of most multitouch touch pads used today, have a next-generation clickpad in development that hopes to close the gap quickly. Called the … Read more