TKSham – More than just a Developer

I recalled my cello teacher – ” Learning Music is nothing about expressing your emotion or feelings, but to improve quality of sound and tone.”

Optimizing is also a topic that we, Engineering Student, always facing.

Recently, some of my classmates (including me) attend lectures with laptops. For me, my eyesight is not good that having another screen right before me would help a lot. I just cannot have a clear image. (Maybe I should change my glasses =P). Anyway having a laptop is very convenient to take notes and access the Internet.

I chatted with my classmate Bill about how to use laptops more efficiently. Using a laptop is something different from using a desktop – at least few people will bring the mouse with the laptop.

I did not get used to use the touchpad and refused to use it. But once I tried to optimize it, I find the convenience it brings to my laptop. I am now happy using my laptop even without a USB mouse.

Actually there should be a configuration panel for the touch pad. It should be under control panel->mouse

The touch pad can be optimized by adjusting the sensitivity. You can try to adjust the speed for double clicking and you will no longer rely left-clicking or dragging by the physical left button. The speed of the cursor should also be adjusted according to fit yourself better.

One of the interesting parts of the touchpad is that people rarely find the “Tap Zones”

Actually you can configure the zones to have some special functions. For me, I configure my top-left area as “Browser backward one web page”, top-right as the mouse Middle Click (good for using Firefox to have anchor/link open in a new tab and my laptop does not have a physical middle button…sigh), bottom-left as Jump to Start Button and bottom-right as minimize the current Window.

With the setting, I can access web pages without moving hands to keyboard to press Backspace to Previous page, or using my thumb to press the left-button. Scrolling through the pages can also be done by pressing the edges. Most of the commands can be made using my index finger.

But I am quite amazed that the “Tap Zones” function is set to “OFF” by default.

make sure you Enable Tap Zones.

That’s it. You now can be happy even without a USB mouse