Re: Touchpad problems with latest kernels

Gene Heskett
2006-08-14T14:40:16Z

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)
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Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.