I recently purchased a laptop from Microsoft (2015 Dell XPS 13") that uses the Microsoft Precision Touchpad. There are a few issues I'm having with this touchpad that I've never noticed with other laptops and I'm wondering if anyone else is experiencing these or if there are any fixes. There is a noticeable delay when trying to make slow light movements. My finger can move several millimeters before the cursor responds. It may not sound like much, but if you're trying to make subtle movements in photoshop, or select a specific character anywhere it's very noticeable and difficult to use. The majority of the time when I lift my finger the cursor will jump several pixels, often moving away from the object I'm trying to target. If you use any browser besides IE, two finger scrolling is very choppy and has a similar delay that's experienced in the first issue. There are a few other minor annoyances, like poor palm detection and using two hands (one to move the cursor and one to click with) but the issues above are the biggest annoyances, ordered by most annoying to least. If anyone has any ways to fix these issues or install different drivers, I'd love to hear about them. Thanks!

Interesting analogy, I actually bought my laptop from Microsoft at the Microsoft store. That would make Dell Microsoft's supplier. I paid Microsoft, they have to support me, your words not mine. This is a Microsoft support form. Nothing against you or the other community moderators, we know you cant fix it yourselves. We want a solution not a deflection. Hopefully we can get the attention of someone who's willing and capable to fix the problem.

The end user really doesn't care who's legally required to initiate what. That sounds like policy Microsoft put into place to avoid accountability. All we want is for Microsoft to take responsibility and fix a problem that's clearly theirs. Untill then this issue will remain unresolved.

Hi Rob, I'm afraid it's not up to Dell, and I've seen this canned response posted from Microsoft support multiple times. Microsoft spec'ed and supplies the drivers for the PTP touchpads. The Microsoft driver adds the horizontal/vertical scroll lock, as evidenced by people who fell back to older synaptics drivers to eliminate it. I've also confirmed these issues with your touchpad team that manages the the driver. I've seen the same issue on Dell, Samsung, and other Windows laptops. 2. There's also a 2:1 horizontal:vertical movement bug in the driver that makes moving diagonally another challenge. You move 30 degrees instead of 45. This again is across multiple PTP machines. Inertial momentum really doesn't happen properly for wheel events. Edge doesn't send wheel events on PTP laptops. I'd just like to see my Windows touchpad work like my Mac, and right now with all of the bugs I don't use my Windows laptop much.

Hi all, I'm a developer on the Precision Touchpad team at MSFT. If you're experiencing issues, I'd love to talk to you more about them - feel free to DM me on Twitter @ross456. Thanks!

I'd like to chime in as an ACER laptop user that I have the exact same problems. So I very much support the position of users like Bill945 that this is not a Dell problem. Now of course, moderators, I understand perfectly about OEMs being strictly speaking exclusively responsible for such problems. But it's like saying the OEMs are strictly responsible for picking Windows instead of over, say, a Linux build. As Microsoft representatives do you really want us to conclude that it's the fault of Dell or Acer that they choose Microsoft? The point about whether the OEMs are responsible are therefore irrelevant here. What we want to hear that is at least something like "The devs in our company are aware of the problem and will work on improving things in the future", or that "They will work with the OEMs to improve user experience." If you guys the moderators here are not allowed to say such things or feed user inputs here to the devs in some way, I sincerely suggest you start interviewing for a better job, if I may be a little blunt.

Microsoft Precision Touchpad, not very precise

Anonymous

I recently purchased a laptop from Microsoft (2015 Dell XPS 13") that uses the Microsoft Precision Touchpad.

There are a few issues I'm having with this touchpad that I've never noticed with other laptops and I'm wondering if anyone else is experiencing these or if there are any fixes.

There is a noticeable delay when trying to make slow light movements. My finger can move several millimeters before the cursor responds. It may not sound like much, but if you're trying to make subtle movements in photoshop, or select a specific character anywhere it's very noticeable and difficult to use.
The majority of the time when I lift my finger the cursor will jump several pixels, often moving away from the object I'm trying to target.
If you use any browser besides IE, two finger scrolling is very choppy and has a similar delay that's experienced in the first issue.

There are a few other minor annoyances, like poor palm detection and using two hands (one to move the cursor and one to click with) but the issues above are the biggest annoyances, ordered by most annoying to least.

If anyone has any ways to fix these issues or install different drivers, I'd love to hear about them.

Thanks!

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

2017-09-09T19:50:46+00:00

Interesting analogy, I actually bought my laptop from Microsoft at the Microsoft store. That would make Dell Microsoft's supplier. I paid Microsoft, they have to support me, your words not mine. This is a Microsoft support form. Nothing against you or the other community moderators, we know you cant fix it yourselves. We want a solution not a deflection. Hopefully we can get the attention of someone who's willing and capable to fix the problem.
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Anonymous

2017-09-09T18:52:12+00:00

The end user really doesn't care who's legally required to initiate what. That sounds like policy Microsoft put into place to avoid accountability. All we want is for Microsoft to take responsibility and fix a problem that's clearly theirs. Untill then this issue will remain unresolved.
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Anonymous

2017-09-09T17:40:54+00:00
Hi Rob,

I'm afraid it's not up to Dell, and I've seen this canned response posted from Microsoft support multiple times. Microsoft spec'ed and supplies the drivers for the PTP touchpads.
1. The Microsoft driver adds the horizontal/vertical scroll lock, as evidenced by people who fell back to older synaptics drivers to eliminate it. I've also confirmed these issues with your touchpad team that manages the the driver. I've seen the same issue on Dell, Samsung, and other Windows laptops.
2. There's also a 2:1 horizontal:vertical movement bug in the driver that makes moving diagonally another challenge. You move 30 degrees instead of 45. This again is across multiple PTP machines.
1. Inertial momentum really doesn't happen properly for wheel events.
2. Edge doesn't send wheel events on PTP laptops.
I'd just like to see my Windows touchpad work like my Mac, and right now with all of the bugs I don't use my Windows laptop much.
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Anonymous

2017-05-29T18:57:31+00:00

Hi all, I'm a developer on the Precision Touchpad team at MSFT. If you're experiencing issues, I'd love to talk to you more about them - feel free to DM me on Twitter @ross456. Thanks!
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Anonymous

2015-11-03T02:11:06+00:00

I'd like to chime in as an ACER laptop user that I have the exact same problems. So I very much support the position of users like Bill945 that this is not a Dell problem. Now of course, moderators, I understand perfectly about OEMs being strictly speaking exclusively responsible for such problems. But it's like saying the OEMs are strictly responsible for picking Windows instead of over, say, a Linux build. As Microsoft representatives do you really want us to conclude that it's the fault of Dell or Acer that they choose Microsoft?

The point about whether the OEMs are responsible are therefore irrelevant here. What we want to hear that is at least something like "The devs in our company are aware of the problem and will work on improving things in the future", or that "They will work with the OEMs to improve user experience." If you guys the moderators here are not allowed to say such things or feed user inputs here to the devs in some way, I sincerely suggest you start interviewing for a better job, if I may be a little blunt.
Was this answer helpful?

2 people found this answer helpful.

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