touch-pad mouse he^H^Hck: can "click" be limited to actual button?

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

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Hello, I now have two computers with edgy on them. My p3 desktop with a
trackball, and now on a Gateway laptop (MT6451 Notebook PC)
It has an AMD Turion 64x2 processor and a 120 gig HD and a
<Many_expletives_deleted> touch-pad mouse.

I could almost like the touch-pad mouse. I mean when I let go of it, the
mouse pointer stays put (like it does with my desktop's trackball.)
But unfortunately, it seams that touch-pad mice are designed so that a
user with enough dexterity can gently move the mouse pointer to where
they want and then just tap on the pointer motion input pad to "left click"
without having to move their finger all the way to the left mouse button.

Well I evidently don't have enough dexterity to properly use this
pointing device. If I use enough pressure on the touch-pad to move the
mouse pointer I frequently click on everything in between where the mouse
pointer was, and the toolbar icon I'm trying to reach.

For example: last night I needed to edit a spreadsheet document in open
office. It's a facsimile of a form I use at work. (I print my own because
I print something else on the back.) There is a cell with a line of text
containing "name:, date:, shift: etc... fields. Since I print my own for
my use I decided to pre-populate some of the fields with my usual data.
to make it all fit in the printable area I had to reduce the font size
of the cell and then mark only the text of my pre-populated fields to
use a larger font, and to print in a non-black color so that I could
easily overwrite it if for instance I was using a different work
position than usual...

If I had been doing this on my desk top with the track ball it would
have taken about 5 to 10 minutes (tops) to complete the task with the
trackball. But with the touch pad mouse I couldn't get the pointer from
the marked section of text to the appropriate tool bar buttons without
undesired clicking on all the buttons in between. at least one of which
caused "all" my changes to be lost in a way that ^Z could NOT undo. So
that I had to start over again and again. It took me over 3 hours to
complete the changes to the single line of text. <whimper> 


Can anyone tell me of a way I can get kubuntu or kde to disable "click
events" triggered by pressure on the touch-pad itself and to ONLY accept a
"click" from the actual mouse buttons???????????

I know I could get it an external mouse, But that wouldn't be
convenient when I use the laptop away from my desk. And if I was at my
desk I could just do such things via the p3 desktop instead... 

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