Monday, November 27, 2006

ubuntu toshiba mousepad fun

I'm currently using a toshiba satellite A75 S-231 while waiting for my winbook to have its LCD hinge repaired. The Winbook is on the way back, I should have it in two days or so (along with a bunch of other goodies, a vonage unit and a long range wireless phone to attach the vonage to.

When I get the winbook back I'm going to have to decide which laptop to sell. Both are good boxes, both are *heavy* boxes. These are not lightweight low power boxes, they're desktop replacements.

I've been having problems with the mousepad on this toshiba for a while. There would be occasions when moving my finger over it just would not move the mouse. On the other hand, right now, at 2AM, the mousepad is beautiful. Not as beatifully smooth moving as on my wife's smaller winbook, nor on my brother-in-law's incredibly sweet fujitsu lifebook, but smooth. For a while, I'd just not be able to get the mouse to move at all (or if I could, it would involve using the bird finger or the ring finger. I don't know why it's suddenly working so well.

My best guesses are:

  1. ubuntu upgrades - ubuntu dapper drake said that it had 200 updates to install (I reinstalled because I didn't have the patience to figure out what was wrong when X wouldn't run). It might be that some of those upgrades involved improving the synaptic mousepad drivers (it wouldn't have been the kernel though, I was already running the most recent ubuntu 2.6.15-27-i686 kernel back when X stopped working.

  2. humidity - if the problem recurs tomorrow, then it probably has to do with environmental factors. I found that wiping my index finger would sometimes help (but not always), pressing down a bit harder would sometimes help (but less often than wiping). Using the bird finger or the ring finger almost always worked, but not that smoothly and not predictably (not clear which finger would work).


I hope it was one of those 200 updates though. This is a lovely box and it'll be cheap for the value when I sell it (3Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM, 100G disk, everything except the winmodem works in ubuntu [well, maybe the winmodem works in ubuntu, I doubt it, but I've not tested since I don't need the modem anymore]).

If the mousepad works perfectly for the next week, it's going to be a tough call, which laptop to sell.

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