Air trackpad learning curve?

[BennyKingston]

Hi Folks,

I was going to buy an iPad for business travel, but have been looking at the Air 11"

I am new to owning a Mac although I've used a Mac pro.

I was in the Apple store yesterday and was playing with the Air. Never having used this trackpad I was getting very frustrated.

1. How difficult is it to really get up and running and productive with it (the trackpad)? Will a month on it get me quick.

2. I do a lot of typing and have the typical Dell desktop keyboard now. Do many people have difficulty transitioning to a macbook keyboard and the "chicklets" keys?

3. lastly I have read that there may be a problem with the "clicking" on this trackpad because of the thin design of the machine. Should I be concerned?

I greatly appreciate anyone taking the time to answer these fundamental questions, Thanks

 

[Lunfai]

Hi Folks,

I was going to buy an iPad for business travel, but have been looking at the Air 11"

I am new to owning a Mac although I've used a Mac pro.

I was in the Apple store yesterday and was playing with the Air. Never having used this trackpad I was getting very frustrated.

1. How difficult is it to really get up and running and productive with it (the trackpad)? Will a month on it get me quick.

2. I do a lot of typing and have the typical Dell desktop keyboard now. Do many people have difficulty transitioning to a macbook keyboard and the "chicklets" keys?

3. lastly I have read that there may be a problem with the "clicking" on this trackpad because of the thin design of the machine. Should I be concerned?

I greatly appreciate anyone taking the time to answer these fundamental questions, Thanks

1. A few days, if you go in system preferences you will get a short video on the right which shows you how to perform the gesture. It's really easy and it's really useful to improve work flow. You can disable any gestures in the system preferences too. But they're all very useful.

2. The keys are great, I think the enter button may be a bit small, but you will get used to it. The key feedback is makes it the best keyboard I've used on a laptop. Go into an Apple store, if you're uncertain, but personally, I love it.

3. You can turn 'Tap to click' on in the gestures pane in system preferences. I like clicking it, but at times, I feel I want to tap instead, so I've enabled it personally. You can tap with two fingers to right click.

 

[Mrbobb]

The keyboard, is a personal preference although I have yet to hear anybody really complain about it.

The trackpad is great, yes, it takes a few days but after that, u wonder how u've been managed wo one. And it's configurable, so if you don't want to click (actually push the pad down) you can configure it to single-tap etc.

 

[wolfpuppies3]

Took me an hour or so to become accustomed to it. It is really quite similar to the magic mouse, in many ways.

 

[BennyKingston]

Thanks for your input

 

[mrsir2009]

The first thing you should do when you get the computer is disable all the annoying gestures that you don't use, and can the weird iOS reverse scrolling so it scrolls like normal (ie: In the direction you're swiping). After that though it won't take long before you'll wonder how you lived without it