This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
The clickpad (touchpad with embedded buttons) is centered on laptop base, not under keyboard, so while you are typing your right hand covers it and your right palm heel presses right next to it. For me, the typing cursor jumps to the mouse cursor every 20 or so keystrokes---because the pad spuriously signals taps, interpreted as mouse clicks. Even adjusting settings to maximum palm check and heaviest touch (so that to send a tap you have to strike the pad squarely---really not practical), during typing I still get spurious tap events, even when my hands are entirely 1/2" or more away from pad's surface.
I suspect the spurious signaling is from force transmitted laterally from my right hand through the palm rest, suggesting that the rest flexes too much. The palm rest surface is plastic, unlike the rest of the case (aluminum). I have seen this flexing issue on Dell Latitude and Precision models for years---one reason I have started looking to other brands. AlienWare boxes don't have this issue, e.g. As far as I can tell, all the manufacturers are using the same basic touchpad technology from Synaptics, so I would blame the packaging. (I even tried installing the touchpad driver available for AlienWare---no change.)
I will be sending this unit back and trying something else.
If you don't care about the pad, you may get along fine with the nice EVGA mouse that was included in the shipping box. I did appreciate the Num Lock key's indicator light (like the Caps Lock key's). Unit feels very solid.
