After all that work with my synaptics pad I finally decided to – essentially – disable it. I bought a $20 notebook optical USB mouse and it works fine. So now, after the system comes up, I just issue

synclient FingerHigh=320

and plug in the USB mouse. So why did I do this? Because I type with the palm of my hand resting on the laptop and the position of the pad is such that the palm under my thumb kept tapping it. My mouse bounced all over the place. There are some “palm” configurations for the Synaptics driver but the documentation is weak about what these do or how to use them. And even if I solve the palm tap issue, the resolution of the pad made it hard work with gimp.

Don't get me wrong – the Synaptics driver is actually quite good and very configurable. But it just doesn't suite my typical use of this laptop. The USB mouse is pretty small (though I saw smaller ones), is optical and has a wheel, and that's good enough for me. Yeah, it's made by MS, but a little black Marks-a-Lot should clean that nastiness from view.

Now I can finally get back to working on my book. I am SOOOO behind on that…