External touchpad for Ubuntu?

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

Owen Thomas wrote:

>I have a laptop computer, and, as I have explained many times before
>now, it annoys me no end that I cannot disable my touchpad.

I feel your pain. Those devices should all come with a button that
can toggle the touchpads. Anyway, maybe one of these pages will be
useful:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/65951/how-to-disable-the-touchpad

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticsTouchpad

>But I do think that I could buy myself an "external touchpad". I
>have my laptop on my lap, and I think that if I plug in an external
>touchpad, and rest it on the arm of my chair, this setup might just
>work.

While this would give you a touchpad in exactly the location you'd
like it to be, it might not disable the laptop's touchpad, so you may
still accidentally use it while typing. If it works anything like
mice, it will just give you an additional way to access the touchpad.
when I plug a second mouse in, I can use either mouse. One doesn't
disable the other.

Also, if you do this and want to disable the one on the laptop, but
not the external one, that will add a level of complexity to the
toggle script that you end up using to make that happen.

-- 
Little Girl

There is no spoon.