With gloved hands, point is stilled

[fallsauce]

How do you like the crap poetry?

But it's true enough, if I'm wearing gloves, the touchpad won't make the pointer move. Why is that? Since when can they distinguish between flesh and other materials?

[arch13]

Touch Pads are based on heat & pressure. One or the other alone will not read well. This is on purpose to make sure the that for example, when you are typing on the keyboard, your wrist doesn't move the mouse.

Gloved hands insulate heat and therefor cause the touchpad to have difficulty understanding the touch and discerning between accidental and purposeful.
The programing in the drivers that help the touchpad understand accidental vs. purposeful is actually quite complex.

[the_marq]

Originally Posted by arch13

Touch Pads are based on heat & pressure.... /snip

Uhh, no they aren't.

Touch pads work on the basis of capacitance (electrical differential).

If it was heat and pressure you could operate a touch pad with a fresh warm McDonald's french fry (you can't, I've tried).

[Slavakion]

I've actually had to consciously reposition my wrists before, because they were setting off the touchpad.

[Redlemon]

Originally Posted by the_marq

Uhh, no they aren't.

Touch pads work on the basis of capacitance (electrical differential).

If it was heat and pressure you could operate a touch pad with a fresh warm McDonald's french fry (you can't, I've tried).

There are some "touch-sensitive" devices that work on heat. The elevator in my college dorm had heat-sensitive buttons; if you were careful, you could select a floor by hovering your finger over the button rather than touching it. The big problem was that on a hot, humid day, every single button would be selected. And those were the days that you really didn't want to have to use the stairs...

(I'm not contradicting the-marq, just filling out the discussion.)

[arch13]

Originally Posted by the_marq

Uhh, no they aren't.

Touch pads work on the basis of capacitance (electrical differential).

If it was heat and pressure you could operate a touch pad with a fresh warm McDonald's french fry (you can't, I've tried).

Your right and wrong.
Older Synaptics touchpads worked on heat and pressure in exactly the same way touch sensative elevator buttons do. The reason? Synaptics also makes those elevator buttons.
Newer models (read: post 1999) work on capacitance.
Synaptics still makes the heat sensative touchpads, and quite a few 2nd teir notbook companies still use that reference design. The only reason I have any clue whatsoever about this was from speaking to an engineer from synaptics about heat sensative buttons for a building in the last office I worked in.