[ubuntu-uk] over-sensitive mousepad

[Matthew Wild]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 4:47 PM, London School of Puppetry
<lspinfo at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have an Inspiron 1525. Had it for a few months- always as I type the
> cursor sometimes flies backwards or upwards to a different part of the text-
> it happens so often that I am on the verge to throwing the thing out. Is it
> the computer or as a friend suggests could it be Ubuntu?
> Any suggestions? Any solutions?
>

I'm always having this problem. The touchpad likes to detect the palm
of your hand as you type, causing the cursor to get up to all kinds of
mischief.

I found a handy tool that will disable the touchpad while you are
typing, this solved the problem for me completely. A guide to using it
is here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticsTouchpad#Disabling%20the%20Touchpad%20Temporarily%20While%20Typing

For the record, I use this (slightly modified) command:

  syndaemon -d -i 3 -t -k

Unlike the example given in the link above it increases the delay to 3
seconds rather than 1 (the -i 3), it allows the cursor to still be
moved, but only disables taps (the -t) and finally the -k tells it to
not count ctrl, alt, etc. as keypresses (so you can still hold down
ctrl and click on something, it won't disable the touchpad). All these
are just my own personal preference, I'm sure you'll find yours :)

Hope this helps,
Matthew.