learning to love/hate the touchpad

The last real laptop I owned used a, uhh, pointer stick (like a pencil eraser) instead of a touchpad. An IBM of some kind.

So I am having to get used to using the pad now. My biggest mistake is accidentally touching it with my thumbs as I type, introducing unintentional cursor movement. Doesn't happen so much anymore but it is surprising when it happens.

One nice feature of the pad (and this may be standard on all laptops for all I know) is multifinger gestures. For example, a normal touch is left-mouse-button, two finger touch is middle-mouse, and three-finger touch is right-mouse. This make more sense if you think of the mouse buttons being numbered 1, 2, and 3 from left to right. I like it.

Also two-finger drags (up, down, horizontal) work like the scrollmouse button. Neat, particularly since Eee mouse buttons (the actual, physical ones) take a fair bit of effort to press.