Does the HP Touchpad Driver suck this bad?

[roygbiv]

I've got the Alps Touchpad drivers from HP's website installed on my XP 311. It's Version 7.5.1711.125 A (BIOS .15 if I recall correctly). Holicow, does the HP version suck this badly? Mine is completely erratic. Sometimes the cursor moves. Sometimes it just sits there. Sometimes it drags and scrolls...sometimes it just doesn't do squat. When it does move, sometimes it moves sloooowly, and sometimes the cursor zooms clear across the screen. It's a complete disaster. Is this *normal*?

[Weishauptus]

apparently yes, unfortunately.
I can recommend the standard windows drivers tbh,
they even have sidescrolling (wohoo) and work perfectly.

[joe_dude]

I think the problem may be multi-touch layer that's loaded on top of the base driver. It can use quite a bit of CPU time, which could be the cause of the lag or strange behavior.

Personally, I've unloaded the extra layer, and it has behaved normally for me. I tend to use the keyboard for scrolling (when I don't use a mouse), so I don't really miss the multi-touch functions.

[roygbiv]

Just curious, Joe...what do you mean you unloaded the extra layer? Are you saying you're using a different driver?

Personally, I can definitely toss fancy gestures too and not blink an eye. I just want usable, predictable, controllable pointer control, and maybe a way to keep it from responding to my palm as I'm typing. Maybe tap & side-bar scrolling is about as fancy as I get.

It now makes sense to me why I see folks linking to the toshiba alt et. al.

Thx for validating...time to experiment.

[joe_dude]

It requires making changes to the registry. :!:

---

Alps touchpad: If you don't want to use scrolling or any fancy touchpad features, in
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run], remove the Apoint.exe entry.

This will save some CPU cycles when using the touchpad, but be aware this also removes the Fn-F12 pad disable functionality! :!:

To disable tapping and/or acceleration by default (before login):
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E96F-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000]
"Tapping"=dword:00000000
"Acceleration"=dword:00000000

[Whiteblade]

If you want better touchpad response use this driver: http://www.x-drivers.com/catalog/compan ... index.html
It is not perfect but its a lot better than the hp one. I advise you to disable pinch zoom if you use it. fn+f12 to disable touchpad doesn't work with that driver as well.

[Suftop]

Use the ALPS driver from Toshiba.

Info/link in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=62&t=3605



That driver lets you not disable tapping altogether, but it has a setting to disable tapping only when typing.

It works =)

[roygbiv]

Screw it, I attempted to uninstall what I was on, and find myself back on 7.5.1711.113. I'm just going to disable tapping, and be done with it. 7.5.1711.113 seems to work well enough. I still get the bonus of side scroll w/ circular scrolling, pinch zoom & stuff, and it doesn't seem to act erratic. Forget about tapping. The less explaining I have to do for my mother the better (she's the one who'll end up getting this netbook once I'm done configuring & backing up. Thanks for the input folks.

[roygbiv]

Ok, I take that back. I've just spent the last hour using the Toshiba drivers (7.5.303.117). Effin' nice. I'm keeping it! Inertia movement doesn't seem to be working...neither does the browser back/forward controls, that I can tell...not that I care. It's nice. I'm actually QUITE surprised at how well the "no tapping while typing" option works out. I didn't think it'd work that well.

[joe_dude]

I'll update my notes. Looks like the Toshiba drivers have worked well for most everyone.