VPCZ1 touchpad strange behaviour

I've noticed a couple of annoying traits about my touchpad, which is probably related to the driver but was wondering if anyone else has noticed either of these:

Firstly, my touchpad sensitivity region does not extend all the way to the edges, especially towards the mouse buttons and the top of the pad. This can be seen by moving the cursor upwards (or down) and it'll stop before your finger actually reaches the border of the touchpad. I've disabled edge scrolling and other enhancements like edge regions. What's interesting is that once your finger is in the "dead zone" and the cursor no longer moves up, you can still move side-side. Horizontally, the problem isn't so bad. It's a bit like the touchpad is unaware where the physical edges are. Does anyone else have this?

Secondly, if you're using your middle finger for moving the mouse and your index finger comes near the surface, the mouse cursor freezes. I assume this is because it's detecting a multitouch (if you open the pressure graph, you don't have to touch the pad, it will detect the finger just above the surface). Adjusting the sensitivity only changes how hard you need to press for the cursor to move, but it'll still detect the presence of another finger above the pad and stop the cursor. Is it possible to disable multitouch? In an older laptop, the touchpad would work with two or more fingers by just averaging their motion which was kind of pointless but also would not have this problem. Is there anything I can do to restore this "useless" behaviour? (or perhaps just respond to the strongest pressure point?)

 

Here's one to add to the list. Occasionally I'll start moving from the right edge of the pad (and yes I do have the scroll regions enabled) but it will detect no movement. I can then plain as day move my finger all around on the pad and nothing will happen - no scrolling, no cursor movement, no button clicks. The odd part is when I try to duplicate this specifically, it works I would expect (ie. cursor movement). It's just occasionally out of the blue it does this. So far the sensitivity adjustment and plam check adjustment haven't affected this.

Also I'm not sure if this is related to the "unaware where the physical edges are" issue above, but on my old SZ I'd use the vertical scroll by having my finger riding right along the physical edge of the pad, 100% reliably. But on the new Z I find that doing this tends to result in *cursor movement* rather than scrolling, and I actually have to move my finger more into the pad to get it to sense scrolling. Which is odd, as the scroll region is supposed to extend right to the edge.

I do have the four outer tap zones enabled, I'll try disabling those and see if there's any change.

 

I too have noticed that, when you touch across the pad but no cursor movement occurs. I think it's down to the multitouch but it doesn't happen often enough for me to really see what's causing it (if it's not that).

 

Hrm, I've got everything but momentum and chiralrotate enabled. No issues whatsoever.

Edgemotion is set to only when dragging

 

I have this very same issue with my Z116GX. I also dropped by a Sony Style store to check out one of the computers they're showcasing and I could also easily reproduce it there.

It's kind of strange because when you're in the Synaptics Touchpad properties window and look at the scrolling regions you can see that the area shown on screen isn't 100% aligned to the area where my finger is, and it doesn't even allow me to go all the way to the left or to the bottom. To the right it sort of overcompensates.. Seems to be an alignment issue, but haven't found a way to re-align it in software so I guess it's a hardware problem.

But I don't think it's supposed to be like this and it's very frustrating to use since it doesn't function like I expect. I'll give my computer to the Sony Style store here on Monday and they'll get the touchpad replaced. They could do it 5 business days, so crossing fingers

 

I've narrowed the behaviour to windows (the multitouch problem). In linux, I can brush the touchpad with other fingers by mistake whilst using the mouse and there's no cursor freeze. Must be something to do with the windows driver!

 

+1

I have the same issue. Hopefully a driver update will sort it out?

 

my vgn-z did the same thing with the touchpad randomly not working. tapping the left and right buttons a few times always sorted it out.

As for the bottom not working good, I think it's by design...don't want your cursor moving around when you try to click on things with the buttons.