True, the advent of multi-finger “tapping” gestures in touchpads means you no longer *need* discrete buttons, but over the years I’ve found that I still prefer buttons if only for their reassuring tactile feel and the elimination of accidental taps when I’m trying to make fine pointer adjustments.īoth buttons are light enough to click without any undue force, and both extend fully to the outside edges of the touchpad. The next major difference between the Magic Trackpad and Logitech’s Wireless Touchpad is that the latter actually has proper buttons located below the touch surface, just as you’d expect to find them on any laptop that’s not made by Apple. Logitech is a member of the Bluetooth SIG and has multiple Bluetooth products on the market, so their use of the Unifying protocol just seems like an unnecessary exercise in vendor lock-in. Granted, the nano receiver is small enough to be unobtrusive and performs on-par with Bluetooth wireless, but that still doesn’t excuse the need to waste yet another USB port if Bluetooth was already available. While convenient if you only ever use Logitech peripherals, I personally feel that the move comes at the expense of consumer choice. K800 keyboard, M570 trackball) that has an orange star logo. In essence, this amounts to any Logitech device (e.g. Whereas Apple makes use of the Bluetooth wireless standard, Logitech uses their proprietary Unifying wireless protocol that allows for up to six compatible Logitech devices to be connected to a single receiver. First, the wireless connectivity is slightly different. Yet despite the overbearing similarities in function and size, there are some key differences to note between the two touchpads. Both track up to four fingers for multi-touch gestures. Both pads are just over 5 square inches, the Logitech Touchpad consuming approximately 5.25 x 5.13 inches of desk space. Both make use of AA batteries and the 2.4GHz wireless band. Brought to market only one year after Apple, it’s hard not to draw obvious comparisons between the two. Enter Logitech’s Wireless Touchpad, an oversized pointing surface for the rest of us. Likewise, standalone touchpads have also been manufactured by companies like Cirque for some time, so why haven’t we seen any widespread adoption of touchpads outside of laptops? The universally small touch surface factor may very well be what’s to blame.Īpple has taken to this market with their oversized Magic Trackpad, but in typical Apple fashion the Windows drivers are half-baked and there’s a distinct lack of buttons. Touchpads for the desktop are nothing new we’ve seen the capacitive surfaces integrated into a wide variety of keyboards for well over a decade now.
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