Polished Trackpad, HELP

[R.R.Mac]

OK i have managed after six years to compleatly polish my trackpad so much that it is bairly usable. I polished it compleatly after one year but it is bairly usable now. Without replacing the trackpad, is there anything i can do to, make it feel nicer (everytime i run my finger along it, it is not very responsive and i feels horrible!!!) thanks

 

[aaron.lee2006]

Why would you polish your trackpad?

 

[johnee]

what exactly do you mean by "polish"? what chemicals / material did you use? How hard did you rub it, and how often? (oh i better stop before i get banned)

Did it slowly degrade over time or just suddenly become responsive?

 

[bartelby]

I think he means that over six years of use the trackpad has become polished.

 

[JPT]

Yeah my teachers iBook is the same way. You know when you use something for a long time over many months-years and it gets all smooth and shiny? Same thing happens to trackpads. Mine is starting to...

 

[mkrishnan]

Mine is fairly polished also, but why do you find it unusable? I haven't appreciated any real change in functionality as it polished.

 

[R.R.Mac]

what i mean by polished is that after 6 years i have polished it with my figers, it happens over time. I am finding it unusasable because i run my finger over it and the cursor hardly moves at all, also its really difficult to actually move my finger over it.

 

[mkrishnan]

Do you exfoliate? Unless you have a lot of callous tissue... I still don't see why this should make using the trackpad any different.

 

[.JahJahwarrior.]

I've put on the total BSE cover....it gives the trackpad the glossy feel to it. I hate it when it's humid or hot, because then my finger doesn't slide along it at all, if I apply any pressure at all. It's annoying. I think a polished trackpad might not feel quit the same, but if it is, then I'm sorry I put this glossy thing on to keep that from happening to me

 

[johnee]

I think he means that over six years of use the trackpad has become polished.

Oh

not having my mac yet, I have my IBM laptop, which has the mouse stick. I hate the track pad and turn it off. not sure what i'll do when I get my mbp

 

[R.R.Mac]

ok so my question is what can i do because i have to use my laptop everyday on the move and using the trackpad is really difficult to use. Is there something i can put over the trackpad or will i have to replace it?

 

[aaron.lee2006]

ok so my question is what can i do because i have to use my laptop everyday on the move and using the trackpad is really difficult to use. Is there something i can put over the trackpad or will i have to replace it?

Use a mouse

 

[Willis]

you may have to replace it

 

[pianoman]

Apple might replace it - for a fee, of course. give 'em a call. also you might consider a small, portable mouse since you're on the go a lot. Logitech's V270 is a small BT mouse but one with a wire or dongle might also work - i.e., the Logitech VX Revolution is designed for laptops.

 

[Gymnut]

Just out of curiosity, what model laptop is it?

 

[taylorwilsdon]

Just out of curiosity, what model laptop is it?

6 years vintage sounds like a G3 iBook.

 

[R.R.Mac]

Yes its a iBook G3 second generation one (not the blueberry or tango or whatever it was). Nearly in Mint condition except for my apple colour which is blue and my trackpad which as you know is polished . Its an amazing laptop though and i am NOT going to replace it unless i cant do the trackpad

but i have replaced the hard drive and the ram to give me a better laptop and i have the latest version of OS X.

 

[EricNau]

My MacBook suffered from the infamous discoloration, and when the Genius replaced the top cover (took her 10 minutes), that included the trackpad as well. Assuming the G3 iBooks are the same, I can't imagine that the repair would be that costly.

 

[R.R.Mac]

do you think i could do anything else than replace it, i mean put something over it or something, does anyone have any ideas?

 

[applekid]

How ironic...

I was thinking about how my sister's iBook G3 track pad got polished/worn out just like the OP is describing. So I was putting down some Scotch tape down on my MacBook Pro's trackpad to prevent them from happening. I have a V270 mouse, but I keep using the trackpad randomly.

Personally, I have found no performance difference when using a worn out track pad vs. a normal one.

Anyways, I suggest covering the track pad in tape and see how that works out for you.

 

[Neptunian]

Use a mouse

I'm totally agree wit u. Get a mouse. It can't be harder to operate using a mouse compared to a trackpad, right?

 

[R.R.Mac]

I'm totally agree wit u. Get a mouse. It can't be harder to operate using a mouse compared to a trackpad, right?

i dont have much space to use a mouse i am in compact areas so it makes it very difficult, i will try the selotape. There is ALOT of diffrence from a new one and a polished one, trust me!!!

 

[Samwise592]

well, since the G3 wont be able to run leopard when it comes out... and since you seem performance minded... i would say eather get a small mouse or deal with it until leopard comes out and get yourself a new MB, you deserve it after 6 years.

It's not worth it to put any more money into something that wont run an operating system that will be out in under 4 months.

 

[R.R.Mac]

what cant iBook G3's or iBook G4's run leapod??

I am trying the selotape and its quite good actually, feels a bit weird and when you overlap it is very odd but overall its quite good, not good as new but good enough . Thanks

 

[mkrishnan]

what cant iBook G3's or iBook G4's run leapod??

The official requirements of leopard have not been made public, as far as I know.

The minimum requirements are almost certainly greater than or equal to the requirements of Tiger -- i.e. Macs without built-in Firewire will not officially be supported (although by hack, almost any Mac that can run OS X will run Tiger).

Some people have voiced the opinion that the G3 processor era will be dropped with Leopard. Really, the only thing that differentiates a G3 and G4 in code execution, for the most part, is that the G4 supports a set of vector processing operations called Altivec™. The chances of Leopard relying heavily on Altivec, however, are rather low, considering it does not exist on Intel processors.

Given that the G5s are still relatively recent, there is almost no chance they will not be supported.

So basically, the only reason Leopard would not work on a G3, or a G4 for that matter, would be if Apple made it not work on them because they felt they would perform too poorly. If that happens, I'm almost certain a hack will surface, like XPostFacto, that allows Leopard to run on G3s and G4s.

Leopard is widely expected by the geek community to run fairly well on G4, G5, Core, and Core 2 processors with adequate RAM, but the final word has to be Apple's.