WSJ: Mossberg takes the Linux bait and snarls ....

Gene Heskett gene.heskett at verizon.net
Fri Sep 14 16:29:27 UTC 2007


On Friday 14 September 2007, Aaron Konstam wrote:
>On Thu, 2007-09-13 at 17:09 -0400, Tom Horsley wrote:
>> On Thu, 13 Sep 2007 13:06:51 -0400
>>
>> "Lamar Owen" <lowen at pari.edu> wrote:
>> > I agree 100% with one of his beefs.  Laptop touchpad sensitivity.
>>
>> When I'm
>>
>> > typing (and as I touch-type around 50 wpm, the keyboard is really a
>>
>> humming)
>>
>> > often the cursor will jump to where the i-beam for the mouse is;
>>
>> ooops, left
>>
>> > click.  But I didn't touch the touchpad.  Aggravating as all get
>>
>> out.  (And
>>
>> > if someone knows a way to turn that down, please let me know, as
>>
>> I've not run
>>
>> > across the setting yet).
>
>It seems to me that Mossberg has identified a terrific business
>oportunity. Someone for $50-$100 will configure all the things he feels
>currently are obscure to configure. It only has to be configured once
>and then mass copied.

This complaint has been the order of the day for the synaptics touchpad used 
in a lot of lappies.  And it is one reason I run a little gizmo called 
synaptics that shuts it off, and I use a pluggin wireless mouse instead.

Fusses about it here, or on the lkml, are either ignored or teased about cuz I 
supposedly can't type.

Of course I can't type when my thumbs must be pulled back against the wrist 
and taped in place with several turns of duct tape.  That of course makes it 
difficult to hit the spacebarsomywordscomeoutalljumbledtogether.  Strangely, 
I don't have to be near as carefull on those rare occasions when I have it 
running XP.

I've asked politely, and I've asked obnoxiously, the same question:

When is the touchpad going to be fixed?

I'm a mostly retired broadcast engineer, the type that makes the high powered 
transmitters you watch tv from work.  I deal routinely with high voltage 
power supplies capable of sucking a megawatt+ from the powerline under fault 
conditions.  Its pure hell to be composing a long technical message, to 
people who just barely understand that turning on a light is done by making 
metal to metal contact in the light switch, only to have half of it 
highlighted by one misscue of that POS, and erased by the next keystroke 
because you don't see it quickly enough when working from and reading notes, 
nor can you stop typing that fast.  More than one of my messages, or a record 
file of what I'm doing has been converted into total gibberish by such 
actions in 50 milliseconds.

Or it can also cause a switch screens, any way to screw up what you are doing, 
it WILL find a way to do it.  Seriously folks, the touchpad needs fixed.  If 
winblow$ can do it, why can't linux?

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
He is considered a most graceful speaker who can say nothing in the most 
words.




More information about the fedora-list mailing list