Elantech Touchpad Annoyances [Solved]

One of the good things about the Eee PC 1000HE is having a touchpad which is pretty wide and is multi-touch. It supports two-finger scrolling, two-finger zoom in/out and two-finger rotating among others. When I got my 1000HE two months ago, I immediately noticed two problems with its ‘very sensitive’ touchpad. I didn’t mind the problem since to me, it’s not a big deal. I use a separate mouse most of the times. But when I started to frequently use my netbook anywhere, I also refrained from using a separate mouse.

My current setting for the Elantech Touchpad

One problem is the ‘very sensitive’ rotating and zooming feature of the Elantech touchpad. I noticed that whenever I scroll pages, one tiny movement of the fingers turns the page to zoom in or out instead of move it up or down. It happens mostly when using Firefox and other internet browsers.

Another problem is the very sensitive tapping feature. It happens most of the times that whenever I am typing, the cursor just suddenly moves from place to place. This is because the palm of my hand sometimes slightly touches a little portion of the corner of the touchpad. It messes up my work. This can happen even when I am using an external mouse unless I disable the touchpad.

I thought it’s only me having the problem but I learned that there’s a lot of people complaining about the same problem. And it even seems like I’m actually the least affected.

So while waiting for the update for the driver from Elantech, if there will be, I played with the touchpad settings and came to a simple workaround.

First, since I do not basically need zooming in or out or rotating objects on the netbook, I decided to disable that control. Immediately, my first problem was resolved. I don’t know if it the sensitivity or it just conflicts with the 2-finger scrolling. Anyway, I’m good with the settings. Disabled Zooming and Rotating.

Second, I went to Tapping settings and set the delay to 2 seconds. So whenever I type, the touchpad will be inactive and so far my second problem has not happened again. I am not very sure if this is the best setting because I have not tried other settings yet. But as long as it works for me, I’m good. You may try the same and let me know how it goes.

Related posts:

1. Sound Not Working on Easy Peasy 1.1 [Solved]
2. Installing compizconfig-settings-manager (ccsm) on Ubuntu Eee (Hardy Heron)
3. Jolicloud Uncovers Multi-touch features of Eee PC 701
4. How to show/hide the battery icon on the EEE PC?
5. Fn F2 not working on Easy Peasy 1.1 [Solved with EEE Control]

Last updated: August 17, 2009 |

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