Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 10:38:04 -0400
From: Gene Heskett <gene.heskett@verizon.net>
Subject: Re: Touchpad problems with latest kernels
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Message-id: <200608141038.04746.gene.heskett@verizon.net>
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On Monday 14 August 2006 09:58, Luke Sharkey wrote:
>Dear Sir,
>
>I am emailing regarding some problems I have been having with the
> touchpad on my laptop (a hp pavilion dv5046ea  running Fedora Core 5
> x86_64). [ Here are the specifications for my laptop:
>http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06b/21675-38187-38191-38191-381
>91-12319008-69074479.html]
>
>
>Support for my touchpad seems to have gotten worse rather than better in
>successive kernels from 2054 onwards.
>
>While on 2054 it generally works fine, On the latest kernels (2154, 2174
>etc.)  I have only to e.g. open a konqueror window for the onscreen
> pointer to start going funny, and jerking about (As happens on computers
> with v. low RAM).  I know its not a RAM problem, as a) everything else
> works fine, there is no slow down of any of the programs I run, only
> problems with the mouse and b) I have just upgraded from 512 MB of RAM
> to 1 GB.
>
>If I plug in a mouse, the pointer works fine.  Though I would happily use
> a mouse, this is often inconvenient on a laptop.
>
>Do you have any ideas what's wrong?
>
>Thanks
>LS

I'm having similar problems with an HP Pavilian dv5220, and with a 
bluetooth mouse dongle plugged into the right side usb port it works just 
fine.  What I'd like to do is totally disable that synaptics pad as its 
way too sensitive, making it impossible to type more than a line or 2 
without the cursor suddenly jumping to someplace else in the message, 
often highliteing several lines of text as it goes, and the next keystroke 
then deletes wholesale quantities of text, thoroughly destroying any 
chance of actually writing a cogent, understandable email response to 
anyone.

Unforch, my questions along those lines have been treated as the ravings of 
a lunatic and ignored.  The bios has no place to disable it, dumbest bios 
I've seen in quite a while, and it has been updated in the last 3 months.

I don't *think* I'm a lunatic, but I'm equally sure that the synaptics is a 
pain in the ass and should be capable of being totally disabled somehow, 
hopefully short of opening the lappy up and unplugging or cutting every 
lead to it until such time as it can be made to behave instead of 
responding to every thumb waved 1/2 to 3/4" above it.  I've gotten hand 
cramps trying to hold my thumbs far enough away from that abomination to 
stop such goings on.

So count this as a vote FOR doing something about the synaptics touchpad 
situation.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
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