[ltp] R61 touchpad not recognized in Ubuntu

[John Jason Jordan]

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:51:23 +0100
"Ugo Riboni" <nerochiaro@neuros.us> dijo:

> So, ideally i'd like to get some advice on how to get the touchpad
> recognized for what it is by the system, and failing that how to
> disable the tap-to-click function completely.

I can't help with this, but surely searching on the Ubuntu forums
should turn up something.

> Not that i need to do anything fancy with it, actually. But one thing
> that annoy me a lot is the tap-to-click function, which is enabled by
> default and i can't find a way to disable.
> Since i'm not really used to typing on a laptop yet, i keep tapping
> the (pretty sensitive) touchpad with the side of my hands while
> writing.This ends up giving focus to other windows in the middle of a
> sentence, which as you can imagine is truly maddening.

When I got my first laptop three years ago that was the first thing I
discovered. Actually it took me several days before I figured out it
was my thumb on the damn touchpad. That was a Compaq which has a manual
on-off switch above the touchpad. I just turned it off and bought a
separate mouse. It was actually a cool deal, as the drivers and
everything for the touchpad still loaded, so if I found myself at the
university having forgotten my mouse at home, I could just push the
button and turn on the touchpad.

Nowadays I use a bluetooth wireless optical mouse (Logitech V270) with
my T61. It took a few minutes searching Ubuntu forums before I figured
out how to pair it up but ever since it "just works." And bluetooth
means I have no wires or USB receivers to lose. If you don't have
bluetooth then I recommend the Logitech V200 USB wireless optical
mouse. There are several others of its ilk on the market as well. 

My T61 doesn't have a manual on-off switch for the touchpad, but it's
simple enough to disable it in the BIOS. I left the button thingy
active, but I'm considering disabling it as well. It's not as bad as
the touchpad, but I still bump it occasionally and then find myself
typing someplace else.