keeping mouse and touchpad properties separate

shuuiuc,

Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum.

The only suggestion I can make for you to use separate hardware profiles.  This would, however, entail the need for a port replicator.  This way, when the system is inside the port replicator it will be using one hardware profile and when it is outside of the port replicator, the system will use a different hardware profile.  You may, for example, have your external mouse in the port replicator and when the system is portable use the internal touch-pad.

I tried using seperate hardware profiles on my 5150 (it can be done with a selection at bootup without using a Port Replicator) when I was having problems with software incompatibilty between MS Intellipoint and the Synaptics Touchpad software.  Unfortuneately, this will only enable or disable the external mouse through hardware settings (with the Synaptics touchpad , it must be disabled through the synaptics driver, cannot be done through XP hardware profiles).  The hardware profiles do nothing to keep the drivers/mouse config software from loading, so you will still have problems "unlinking" the settings.  In the end, I wrote I nice E-Mail to MS asking them to make their driver less autocratic.  I'm sure that the issue will be resolved promptly as the response E-mail said my input was very important to them and they take customer input very seriously. LOL.

Edit: my resolution to the problem was to uninstall the MS software and use the synaptics touchpad driver to control the external mouse settings, as I valued the advanced touchpad features more than the advanced MS features.  I've found the best compromise for me is to have the pointer speed set high with precision pointing enabled.

JK

Message Edited by jk79 on 02-24-2004 01:23 AM

I see.  I think it would be nice to be able to control the pointer speed/accel separately depending on which device you were using. 

That is, when I'm using the touchpad, with or without a mouse present, the speed is somewhat fater then using the mouse.

ya' know each controlled by separate properties... doesn't seem like a complicated thing since the input is coming from two different sources... maybe i dont see the difficulty.

has anyone ever found a solution yet that lets both a mouse and touchpad run simultaneously with separate speed settings?

even a bypass function would be acceptable so when you plug in an external mouse it functions with its own speed settings until you unplug it in which the touchpad's settings would be restored.