I have a Compaq Presario CQ60-307EA Laptop which has the Synaptics touchpad. It works fine, but one thing that's never worked is the disable button above it, which should completely turn off the touchpad. But when the disable button is pressed nothing happens, the light changes to orange like it should, but it isn't disabled and is still active.
I was wondering if anyone had got their Synaptics touchpad disable button to work. I find it strange as my friend has a Compaq Presario CQ61 which is a slightly different model, but still has the Synaptics Touchpad and his disable button worked fine, yet mine doesn't.
Any help on getting it to work would be great!
Thanks!
JanC thanks for posting those guides. I have semi fixed the problem, so I thought I'd post the answer in a seperate post.
Basically what I've done is use gconf-editor to go to: /apps/gnome_settings_daemon/keybindings
Looking at the TouchPad entry the default was "XF86TouchpadToggle". However, after creating a keyboard shortcut for the touchpad disable button registered as Help not XF86TouchpadToggle, so I've now changed the value to Help in gconf-editor and my disable button works. The only problem is I have to press the disable button twice for it to be disabled and like wise to re-enable the device.
It does work now though, which is something. It even registers the disabling and re-enabling of the touchpad with a notification in the top right, which is pretty cool.
I suppose the hotkey on your laptop is not recognized by Ubuntu (kernel or Xorg) yet. You might want to read the hotkey architecture overview and troubleshooting guide and file a detailed bug report if you find out what's wrong.