ASUS R500A Touchpad Spastic/Erratic

Just purchased an R500A laptop for my daughter. Within hours we began noticing that the mouse pointer was going spastic. It would jitter, wiggle, jerk its way around, sometimes spontaneously selecting gui buttons or random items on the desktop.

This would occur with a single finger resting motionless on the touchpad.

I returned it to Fry's for an exchange. The new one I got just now is doing the EXACT same thing.

I have found through experimentation that this ONLY happens when the laptop is plugged into the AC power adapter. In fact you can unplug, rest your finger on the touchpad, and the mouse pointer is motionless. Then have someone plug it into power and the pointer goes into fits. Unplug it, and it settles back down.

It is important when doing this that you are only touching the touchpad. If you have another hand or finger resting on the metal palm rest it doesn't happen. In fact, you can leave the single finger on the pad, then switch between touching/not touching the palmrest with another hand/finger and watch the mouse pointer go from nuts to normal.

Really wish ASUS could fix this as this is a killer laptop otherwise for the price.

I'm returning it tommorrow. Daughter is not happy

 

There are some grounding issues with some of the UX series too that cause the same issues - although this sounds more extreme. Have you contacted Asus support regarding this, ToneSurfer? Perhaps they're aware of how prevalent it is and can remedy it under warranty for you.

 

No I didn't bother contacting ASUS. Once I determined it was hardware/power issue that convinced me that the item was going back to the store. Why would I want to spend $$$ and then ship a laptop to ASUS to be worked on with no guarantee of repair and a likely long turnaround. I'll find something else.

I've since done additional searching and found numerous posts on youtube regarding the ASUS touchpads on other models. Some go as far as opening the thing up and cutting away foil shields and stuff. Quite the hack to fix something that never should have left the doors at ASUS.

Here is a perfect example of what I was seeing (note he's got it plugged into AC).

ASUS N76VJ - Touchpad haywire - YouTube

 

I can't say I blame you. It's a common occurrence across not only one or two models, but across several series. I'm sure they're aware of it and it will be patched in due time.

In any case, happy hunting for your new laptop!