My work laptop is powerful enough for what I’d like to do, but there are a couple of things that really annoy me about the design when compared to my less powerful personal laptop – a MacBook*.
The Pad
First of all, the track pad is pretty terrible. There’s no way to know when you’re at the edge and I sometimes just end up with my finger moving off the pad, and I’m confused as to why the cursor is not moving. It also has a pretty horrible button at the bottom. For some reason my thumb gravitates towards the middle – and clicking there means very little happens.
Apple laptops have these very large and very smooth pads which tend to work really well. But why can’t other PC makers come up with something that’s even close to it? (I know Samsung may have with their Series 9 – I’d like to try it)
The Keys
The second issue – and my biggest issue by far – is addition of the “Quick Launch” keys on the left hand side of the keyboard. Why the heck would anyone want these keys to be on the keyboard in the first place – never mind being right next to important keys like tab shift and control. Every single time I type on the laptop keyboard I hit that print key when I’m trying to press shift. And – as far as I know – there is no way to turn all of them off.
HP aren’t the only PC manufacturers doing this though, even Apple has a strip of specialized function keys at the top – but with Apple the whole experience is much nicer, and I have never pressed any of those keys when my muscle memory tells me I’m doing something else.
* My MacBook runs Windows.