How I "fixed" my laptop Alps touchpad

[Default User]

On Wed, 2007-06-27 at 08:09 +0100, Tony Arnold wrote:
> 
> Default User wrote:
> > My laptop has an Alps touchpad (not Synaptics). Running any FOSS system,
> > it was too slow. Moving from top to bottom or side to side of the
> > touchpad only moved the cursor about 1/2 to 2/3 the height or width of
> > the screen. So I was using a mouse (on a laptop?) instead. What the
> > hell, it worked. 
> > 
> > Today, running Ubuntu 7.04, I finally figured out a quick fix for the
> > touchpad. All I had to do was, as root, add one line to the
> > file /etc/X11/xorg.conf: 
> > 
> >         Option          "AccelFactor"           "0.5"
> 
> I've been looking for this for a while. I'll give it a try. Do you know
> if increasing the value of AccelFactor increases or decrease the amount
> of movement of the cursor? I would imagine increase!
> 
> Regards,
> Tony.
> -- 
> Tony Arnold, IT Security Coordinator, University of Manchester,
> IT Services Division, Kilburn Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL.
> T: +44 (0)161 275 6093, F: +44 (0)870 136 1004, M: +44 (0)773 330 0039
> E: tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk, H: http://www.man.ac.uk/Tony.Arnold
> 

Increasing the value increases the acceleration when moving the cursor
(which is not quite the same as  increasing cursor "sensitivity". BTW,
after a little practice, I reduced the AccelFactor to 0.1.  There are
many other options one can add and/or modify in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. As
stated, this was just a "quick fix" which got the touchpad to a usable
state. It's still not perfect, but before, it was unusable. Experiment!