VPCZ touchpad behavior

Are others out there experiencing erratic behavior with their Synaptics touchpad on the VPCZ series? I've been asking haltingly around the forums, but I don't see many (well, any) discussions about it.

I'm convinced mine is responding to contact by my palms and thumbs on the palmrest and front of the laptop. At times, I can predictably tap lightly on the touchpad and the pointer will jump all the way to the edge of the screen, and it seems like I can repeat that behavior until i lift my hands up and only touch the TP with my fingertip.

A few weeks ago, I almost got myself set up for a visit from a Sony tech, but after about 45 minutes on the phone, I just got disconnected. I gave up on a search for a solution, but it's really starting to bother me.

Anyone have any ideas about this, including possible remedies? Thanks.

BTW, I have a VPCZ1290X, bought in July.

 

Hi Jasman, mine works perfectly, no problems so far, although I would like a bit more of functionality. If yours is not a software glitch (which it seems it's not), it must be a hardware fault and most probably an earthing problem. Has it always been like this? Have you tried connecting an external mouse and see how it does (although I would bet it would work ok)? If it's a hardware issue, then it's a SONY visit time...

 

Yes, it's been like this since I got the laptop, and I have a carbon fiber body version (wondering if that makes any difference). I guess I should proceed with a visit. I'm trying running linux right now to rule out an OS/driver issue, but I'm almost sure this is what you describe (not necessarily a grounding problem, but maybe an isolation issue).

 

When you use the touchpad, do you hold the laptop right under the lip by the fingerprint reader? Someone had this problem and it was because apparently the touchpad is so responsive that it picked up a capacitive touch from there. If not, have you tried new drivers? There's new ones on Synaptic's site. Also are you talking about erratic behaviors as you type? You can adjust "Palmcheck" within the settings menu provided by Synaptics that guards against what the touchpad percieves and unintentional touches on the touchpad.

 

Hi, Andrew. You mean to say the problem wasn't there before and now it's developed? And how are you sure it's just a hardware issue? Is it erratic or happening all the time?

 

I've got told by an technician that is a common Sony hardware bug. All I can remember is, that it had something to do with metal parts under the palmrest and/or grounding.

I have similar problems with my TZ, but I discovered them after some time of use, so I can't say if this developed over time (or if its caused by my sweaty fingers )

 

any one tested the multi toch drivers for the z13 ?

 

Did the tech (a Sony tech?) say there was a remedy for it, or that it was something Sony knows about and covers under warranty? Thanks.

 

hmmmm, I'm getting convinced that my problem is just because I tend to have my thumb too close to the touchpad when I click the left button, so that it grazes the pad a bit and causes the cursor to jump. I just got used to where I should click and now it's fine. I think...... admittedly haven't played with it much. And perhaps a smarter touchpad driver wouldn't be so jumpy.

Anyway, I'm totally wiping windows to install linux on the drive, so I won't really be able to go back and compare with the windows behaviour.... if I continue to have problems in linux then I'll have to contact sony. But I suspect at that point then it will just be a matter of tweaking the open-source synaptics driver.

 

I'm pretty positive that my thumb isn't getting anywhere near the pad, but it is touching the laptop body, so that may result in a conductivity issue. Newer drivers don't seem to have solved the problem, in my case, but I'm still waiting for another episode of really jumpy behavior when I'm tapping around. For me, it's always a problem having to do with tapping, and unlike a lot of people, I hardly ever use my buttons and almost always tap-to-click and tap-and-drag.

Report back your experience in Linux, too. I need to spend some more time working in Linux to see what the difference is. The Linux synaptics driver seemed perpetually buggy for the TP on my last laptop, a Dell e1505, and though the issue has been in a bug tracker for years, I'm not sure it's ever been corrected entirely. So, in a way, I don't trust that driver to test for a hardware issue.

 

Think I've concluded that the newer Synaptics drivers included with the Scrybe suite don't make a difference. For a while, seemed more stable, but now I'm getting random pointer jumps again.

 

So I've been experimenting with different linux distros/installs on my Vaio Z. Now I've just booted into a very minimal barebones arch distro with a custom kernel (compiled with some patches to make some random Z stuff work nice).

Anyway, here I am in a setup with verrry default minimal settings; the linux synaptics touchpad driver is installed. I boot into X, and I guess the sensitivity is set up to HUGE. Here's what I notice:

I can move the cursor without touching the touchpad.

Like, I have my finger hovering over the surface of the touchpad, but not actually touching it. The cursor's very jumpy, but I can move it around the screen. I put any conducting surface (e.g. metal pencil, or human skin) *near* the touchpad and it is capable of sending mouse info.

So I think when I was having trouble, I might have simply been getting my thumb *near* the edge of the button towards the touchpad, and it was able to send enough of a signal that the synaptics driver thought it might be a "relevant" touch. Presumably just better software could handle this better. I'm obviously going to be really messing with the linux touchpad config now.

But anyway, I wonder if that's what you'd been experiencing; not touching the touchpad, but simply coming close enough to it that its hypersensitivity was causing problems?

I don't know enough about touchpad technology but I guess I should learn how it does this

Edit: For example, the "groove" of the palmrest at the top of the touchpad where it dips down towards the spacebar. I can run my finger along the groove and the mouse will jump around. This also works on the sides of the touchpad if you're close enough to it. So I suppose on the Z, one can consider the touchpad to be "larger" than it seems!!

Is this a problem? ie. do people notice that their touchpad is sensitive to the area beyond its physical surface (including the *vertical* hovering space above it)? Or are the drivers typically good enough to ignore all these weak spurious signals?

 

Whoa, that is not normal infzy (@_@)!

Have you thought of getting your Midi-chlorians level checked?

 

My mouse doesn't jump around unless I touch the actual touchpad. I can "rub the groove" all I want. Sounds like you may have a hardware issue.

 

Well like I think this has something to do with the way *all* touchpads work. I mean, my touchpad appears *fine* if the sensitivity is turned down, which I assume the synaptics driver *always* does.

Actually I figured out that what was happening is that the touchpad was hooked up to the mouse driver instead of a touchpad driver. And of course a mouse will be sensitive to any data about movement, whereas touchpads need to filter out much more noise.

It's just interesting to me that the touchpad is sensitive enough to receive all that spurious info, and then the driver has to throw it out in order to make it appear sane

 

^Let me go a step further. If I crank the sensitivity to MAX in the synaptics utility in windows I still cannot move the mouse unless I touch the actual touchpad...no matter how hard I push, etc. It really sounds like you have a hardware issue, perhaps grounding or an insulator of some sort wasn't correctly applied.