Precision pointstick vs ThinkPad trackpoint.

Hey Guys,

I'm contemplating to get a Precision M4600/4700 as my next laptop but as a long time ThinkPad (trackpoint) user need your input on the quality of pointstick (Precisions) compared to trackpoint (ThinkPads). The thing is, I almost never use touchpad (keep it disabled in BIOS) or external mouse. And since I totally depend on a trackpoint/pointstick, its quality (precision, sensitivity, speed, etc) is paramount to me. Trackpoint is or was the way to go for me until Lenovo started losing the features/warranty/performance/price battle to Dell and now I'm seriously thinking about getting a precision.

So please, share your feedback, especially those of you with experience in both camps and similar preferences

Thank You

 

It's worse. Same goes for HP's.

That being said, I found myself using the trackpoint on my E6400 because even the lousy trackpoint is better than Dell's sometimes lousier ALPS touchpad...

 

Oh, how much worse? Are we talking slightly or significantly worse?

 

Sigificantly worse. Elitebook and Precision/Latitude trackpoints are an afterthought really. Lenovo spends $$$ and time developing a good trackpoint.

 

I think that's hard to quantify. I think that depending on your personal preference and how you adjust the driver settings, it could be much or not that much worse. I personally find it pretty bad, but obviously not bad enough such that it's unusable.

 

*sigh*...wish I could find a local shop with Precisions to try before buying...

Owned a few Elitebooks in the past and while their trackpoints were ok after replacing the stock caps with the TP ones, the buttons were a complete failure.

 

I think that the TrackPoint is better, or you could replace the PointStick with a TP nub and get the same effect. Sinking the nub downwards makes it hard to control for me (few friends have M4600 workstations), whereas the TrackPoint is raised up from the keyboard.

 

Precision's point stick is crap compared to the Thinkad's Trackpoint.

The only Dell I had that had a good pointstick was my old Dell E6500.

HP's pointsticks are bad, I dont think I've seen one yet that's any good.

 

I search on ebay once and I think there are 3 kind of caps for the thinkpad trackpoint thingy.
Anyone ever compare them?

 

The Soft Dome is the default dome shipped out with all current Thinkpads, Soft Rim is basically just like the Dell/HP domes, and Classic is that rock-hard nub from the old-Thinkpad days at IBM (the ones that will hurt your finger if not used correctly).