Which touchpad driver should I use?

I just updated to the newest one on the dell site but now my touchpad isn't even working!

Lemme know which driver has the least lag, please!

 

Even though it is not an official Alienware/Dell driver, the NBR thread linked below has my preferred synaptics driver choice for the M17x-R1 & M17x-R2... less lag & MANY more features.

Multi-touch M17x touchpad driver

Good luck on your search!

 

Thanks, seems better than what I had before but nothing compared to my previous Inspiron which was flawless, still, a step in the right direction thanks!

 

The new Alienware touchpad driver came out on JUNE 21, 2010. The new driver installation should have paused and asked you to delete the old driver first. If you skipped this step you probably corrupted the installation. I deleted the old driver and than restarted the installation, accepting 'yes to all' as the installation was half started already. Everything went fine. Big improvement in mouse polling. Went into control panel, mouse, and adjusted speed and it works out pretty good. However the touchpad will never be even remotely close to the Taxtx mouse or G9 mouse. I am using both and probably like the Taxtx marginally better. The Taxtx mouse was on sale recently.

P.S. The alienware touchpad still sucks compared to the XPS mouse pad.

P.S If you are not using the dell stock driver than remember to delete your 3'rd party driver or installation may not work and you wil have a corrupted registry.

 

*Try deleting again and reinstalling
*Call Alienware and ask which items in regsitry are safe to remove.
*Or try a 64 bit registry cleaner designed for windows 7 64. The 32 bit registry cleaners either won't do a full job or will corrupt a 64 bit registry.
*Set up a couple of windows restore points in case the registry cleaner fails. Leave those restore points for a couple months in case you find another software affected by the cleaning.

P.S. I use to occassionaly use a brand of registry cleaner but it had problems with Roxio. Had to exclude those files all the time. I called Roxio technical support said that their software was written in such a way that registry cleaners will delete their DLL's every time. You might want to exclude PowerDVD just to be safe.

 

True, it has MANY more features! Yet, it would be nice if it succeeded in accomplishing the most basic one - moving the mouse cursor over the screen properly!

 

hey Taza, i was wondering how u went abt installing this driver and did u get all the multitouch features (in particular including pinch and zoom) ?

 

It works fine for me.

I uninstalled all synaptics drivers/software from the M17x, rebooted & installed the HP version I linked.

Aside from the normal, single finger, touchpad features, it has 2 finger scrolling, 3 finger press (I have mine set to open Firefox) & 3 finger flick. It does not have pinch or zoom. If there was a version that had true multi-touch, with stuff like pinch & zoom, I would definitely be one of the first to install it.


Explanations of the additional features:
Two-Finger Scrolling
The Two-Finger Scrolling feature allows you to scroll vertically or horizontally and initiate scrolling from anywhere on the TouchPad surface. Simply place two fingers down on the TouchPad and then slide them in the desired direction. You do not need to be in a scrolling region to scroll.

To use Two-Finger Scrolling:
1. Place two fingers down on the TouchPad surface. The fingers should be slightly separated.
2. Using a straight continuous motion, slide both fingers in the desired direction.
3. Lift both fingers up off the TouchPad surface to stop scrolling.


Three-Finger Press
The Three-Finger Press gesture provides a shortcut for launching a specified application or applications.To enable this feature, select the Enable Three-Finger Press check box. To customize the applications that launch, click the Configure button.

To use the Three-Finger Press feature:
1. Place three fingers down on the TouchPad surface. Ensure that there is a small gap between the fingers.
2. Hold your fingers still until the application or applications begin to launch.
3. Lift your fingers up off the TouchPad surface.


Three-Finger Flick
The Three-Finger-Flick gesture enhances navigation for a variety of applications. You can use the Three-Finger-Flick gesture for browsing the Internet or scrolling through photos in a photo viewer window. You can also use the Three-Finger-Flick gesture to enter or exit slideshow mode.To enable this feature, select the Enable Three-Finger Flick check box.

To use the Three-Finger-Flick gesture for navigation:
1. Place three fingers, slightly separated, down on the TouchPad surface.
2. Flick your fingers in a linear, continuous motion in the desired direction, moving from one side of the TouchPad to the opposite side.
3. Horizontal finger motion, sliding your fingers to the right or left will page forwards or backwards in a photo viewer or an Internet browser window.

To use the Three-Finger-Flick gesture for slideshow mode, slide your fingers vertically. Slide your fingers upwards to launch slideshow mode. Slide your fingers downwards to exit slideshow mode.

 

I would really like to see how it works. Preferably with screenshoted polling rate.

Since that link (or rather the one, buried inside 2-3 followup pages), is broken.

 

Thank you for the suggestion, however I'm not interested in benchmarking the touchpad on each system to prove with numbers to someone else that they already do exactly what I want, exactly when I want it to do it, anywhere on the screen. It works as well as the touchpad on any of my previous notebooks (Dell Inspiron 5150, Dell Inspiron E1505, Dell Inspiron E1705 (had a "his & her's" matching pair of this one), Dell Inspiron 17 (1750), Dell Mini 10v (1011), Dell Studio 17 (1745), Dell XPS 1730, Dell Precision M6400, HP Pavilion dv2000, a Toshiba Satellite from 2005, plus a few others that I can not remember the brands & models of at the moment). If you wish to take the time to benchmark yours, be my guest.

The Windows 7 link of the hardwarezone post that amil9145 linked to is working fine for me. I just downloaded it again to make sure & the MD5 matched the original I installed.

In case there is an issue with that page for you, here is the direct download for the Windows 7 version:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp47501-48000/sp47815.exe

Good luck.

 

Thanks the link seems to work now. I am just surprised how come it works "fine" on your system yet it seems everyone else has polling rate issues. If it's polling @ ~25 Hz:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ad-cursor-movement-polling-rate-problems.html

I have tried several drivers so far, and neither has made any huge improvement. Mine is already "benchmarked", with video in the other thread btw:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6318041-post227.html

 

Just as I thought... absolutely no evidence (I'm shocked...).

Polling with said driver on mine is still 25 Hz.
Polling with Windows default driver on mine is 33 Hz.

For the record, polling on m11x is 80-100 Hz.

 

Oh get over yourself.

In my previous post I politely stated that I had no interest in finding, downloading & running some random benchmark software in order to prove myself to some random name on the internet.

The touchpad does what I need it to do, when I need it to do it.

End of story.