Disable laptop touchpad

[O. Sinclair]

Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Monday 01 February 2010, Reinhold Rumberger wrote:
>> On Monday 01 February 2010, Chris Jones wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>>> If that is a synaptics touchpad, check dmesg to see how it signs
>>>> in, there is a utility by the same name that sits in the dock
>>>> that can enable or disable that touchpad.  First thing I
>>>> install after a fresh install on my lappy.
>>> Just out of complete and utter curiosity, why do you guys need to
>>> do this at all. I mostly use an external USB mouse as well with
>>> my laptop, but I have never disabled the touchpad. It is
>>> convenient for the 1% of the time I don't have the external
>>> mouse. I've never had any sort of issue with both active at once
>>> so I'm just curious as to why all the effort to turn it off ...
>> If you are writing a lot, it's gonna become a real PITA to re-
>> position the cursor every single time you brush the touchpad.
>> Especially when writing while you're on a train, this can *really*
>> get out of hand.
>>
>>  --Reinhold
> 
> Particularly when it switches screens on you in the middle of a word, or 
> hilights the whole damned page, which is then summarily erased by the next, 
> unstoppable in time, keystroke.  The English language at least, has only 
> about 1/3rd of the words in my 2 minute monologue when that happens, which is 
> probably just as well. :(
> 
> 
To get a menu in System Settings "mouse keyboard" area for touchpad go here:
https://launchpad.net/~mishaaq/+archive/ppa/+packages

add the ppa for Jaunty (it will still work) and install the kcmtouchpad 
package. You can now set the sensitivity of the touchpad to avoid the 
incidental "tapping" or switch it off etc etc from System Settings

Sinclair