Keyboard and trackpad

Upside-down is backward

I can't look at the R7 without thinking of its odd Star Trek Into Darkness tie-in, and in a way that's fitting: This device does feel like something from the future. Maybe even from an alternate universe, where a butterfly flapped its wings differently and created an alternate timeline. In this parallel world up is down and down is up, and the keyboard and trackpad have been switched around on your laptop.

I wondered why Acer would have swapped the two on the R7: Was I holding it wrong? Was someone drunk at the factory? Turns out it's neither. It's just that Acer doesn't think you'll need the touchpad — the screen often either floats above it or covers it entirely, so you have to slide your hands underneath just to mouse around.

The R7 eventually settled into my life as something like a portable all-in-one. I'd use an external mouse (which I had to buy) when I was at my desk, and use the touchscreen in a pinch — though it's so big and heavy that I only moved it when absolutely necessary. In the latter case, though, Windows is still way too mouse-reliant for this idea to work. And in the former, it's just annoying to use an external mouse all the time.

Acer says its research showed that most people use external mice, and the company's killing the trackpad in favor of external devices, and especially the touchscreen. But if that research is true — and I don't think it is — why not actually just kill the touchpad? Acer says it's excited about bringing the Ezel hinge to other devices, and one of them should definitely be 24 inches or so, when an external mouse becomes a no-brainer. As it is, I feel like I'm using an awkward tweener device that's not even designed to be useful as a laptop.

Plus, palmrests exist for a reason. As it is I have to perch my hands above the keyboard to use the trackpad, or angle them upward just to reach the keys — either way it's uncomfortable and either way I'm pretty sure I'm getting carpal tunnel. The keyboard itself is pretty good, with keys that look and feel a lot like the square Apple chiclet keys — they're the tiniest bit mushy, but I picked up the R7 without any learning curve at all. Well, except for the whole "the trackpad is nowhere near where I expect it to be" thing. Even the trackpad is fine, a little jumpy but mostly usable — it's just that using it is a horrible and uncomfortable mess.

Points to Acer for trying, and there's a lot here the company can build on. I love the Ezel hinge, and all the insane ways it lets you use the computer — the R7 is if nothing else a really fun device to show people. And maybe Acer's right that someday we'll all just use touchscreens to get all our work done. Maybe someday the trackpads on our laptops will simply be vestiges of a bygone era. But today is not that day.