[biogon]

Man... I was hoping this would fix my problem.

I tried both the tape and the rubber bumper-stopper mods/hacks on my new Dell Mini 1012 with the integrated Synaptics touchpad.

No go -- somehow the touchpad is sensitive enough to pick up what I'm guessing is the adhesive(!) on the bottom and is still throwing off my mousing in both Windows 7 (using Dell, HP, and Synaptics direct drivers) as well as in Ubuntu UNR.

Ugh, this touchpad is really pissing me off.

What a bad move, Dell... what were you thinking?! Did you even TEST this thing out???

Sigh.

-j

[Petey]

Is it just me or can't you just alter the sensitivity in system preferences??

Or is just me?

[biogon]

Petey,

Sensitivity isn't what's causing the problem. I can bring sensitivity down to the minimum and it still jumps.

The problem is that the drivers don't know enough to ignore motion input from the area over the buttons, so if a user rests his finger on the surface of the touchpad on the button (like in normal use), the drivers sometime interpret that as "motion", thereby making the cursor jump all over the place.

In contrast, the Ubuntu 9.10 drivers as amended have fixed this, apparently by ignoring motion input from the area over the button while there is other motion on the main part of the touchpad.

This appears to be a similar approach as used by Apple.

-j

[webman2k]

Just to chime in on this, the trackpad was irritating at first - tried to work around with just using tap commands for clicks and drags, but that wasn't always intuitive.

I found that the very bottom of the trackpad isn't very sensitive. So, when I want to click, I rest my finger half off the trackpad, half on at the bottom, then roll forward to click. I haven't gotten any jumps since I started doing this maneuver, and now I've just gotten used to it.

[aghartha]

I just got bored at the office and gave this a shot. I covered my track pad with a strip of masking tape (won't leave any residue). ****, it actually works! The pointer doesn't jump around when I'm clicking, two finger scrolling is really responsive. I'm impressed!

[DivinePower]

I really dont have any issues with my trackpad. Maybe its just the fact I constantly look for ways to work around what is there. (I'm constantly rolling my finger tip to get small movements - things of that nature) I really dont know. I dont have any tape on my touchpad. The only time I've been frustrated with it is when I have tried to use two finger scrolling. I just prefer the edge scrolling myself. Scroll vertically on the side and horizontally on the bottom.

[pavel]

Originally Posted by canada eh

Does any one know how to remove the little metal bump between the buttons to make it feel more like a MBP touchpad?

It seems that the best solution is to somehow remove the trackpad itself and grind down that metal bump...
However:
The MBP uses a single tact switch for the trackpad whereas the 10v uses two. it seems that the MBP detects right/left button presses by combining finger position and the single button event. If you were to remove the separator bump on the 10v trackpad, you may encounter a situation where a click pushes both the right and left tact switches. This is something that might be fixable in the mouse driver.

Another thing is that without that bump the trackpad might bend or crack in the middle due to lack of support.

edit: clear tape over the entire trackpad doesn't help that much. I used Scotch "mailing and storage tape" and it's too glossy, which makes it more difficult to use the trackpad.

[mtownron]

i installed snow leopard, and updated without not as much as a single glitch. Worked perfect. Yesterday trackpad became unresponsive.........any suggestions?:confused btw, its a dell mini 10v. and it has worked wonderful, any help would be greatly appreciated.

[meathane]

i love the effort people are putting in to helping this trackpad issue, but shame on DELL for releasing such a useless piece of trash into the wild, i mean, how does a trackpad like this get past product testing? it's TERRIBLE.

i had a 7mm strip of plaster (or 'band-aid' for you americans) across the bottom, worked alright but i lost out on the middle of the pad. gonna put electrical tape on like diagonals later, fingers crossed

[underwhelmed]

Best solution is to install the mini 10 trackpad in it's place.

Takes a bit of hacking, but not too expensive and much better results than tape.

Here's the guide I used to order the right parts and do the swap-
Guide: Mini 10 Touchpad into Mini 10v