accupoint… right.
someone help me. please. the mouse control thing on my laptop, formerly known as the toshiba accupoint, informally known as the nipple is officially possessed. it seems it happens to a lot of people with or without accupoints — mostly with laptops, at least — that the mouse tends to drift without moving it, drifting stronger and stronger till it finally nestles itself permanently in a random corner of the screen, refusing to budge.
so i’ve been using the computer mouseless for the past couple of days. it’s sort of awkward but not altogether impossible, like driving with your feet. fixing an external mouse helps in that it’s stopped acting on its own, but i (a) have lost confidence in the reliability of this state and (b) am completely prevented from my usual computing posture of lying front-down on my bed, laptop further away, arms outstretched. now i actually have to prop myself up to use the mouse.
trivial but grating, for sure.
random searches online have come up to not much, with mainly problems posed and no solutions. except for people who insist that the mice (mouses?) are (a) virused (b) trojanned — like, someone’s controlling it externally… ooh (c) possessed. i think it’s a timebomb that toshiba has put in to make you change your decently-working laptop after several years.
like, they couldn’t wait till the laptop broke down on its own. and, understanding the nature of its buyers as practical, not altogether fashion-conscious, value-for-money-seeking (think: the opposite of all that is the mac) they couldn’t risk waiting for their buyers to drop the products for the next sleeker one on the market, since they wouldn’t. naturally.
and i’m too afraid to bring it back to the toshiba service centre, because the last time i went there for a simple loose socket i wanted tightening, they ruined my motherboard and graphics card, and ended up having to change it all. and directly impinge on my very internet-reliant pathetic existence.
toshiba, i’m on to you.
Get a MAC! :p
I’m waiting for the day I can control my cursor with my eye movements, but then again it’d be all over the place and I wouldn’t be able to get anything done.
By the way, changed your link already.
And get a mac!
(i don’t know if you’ve noticed, but on the permalink pages your header disappears, probably cos you’re using relative links for the images.)
adri> thanks! i hadn’t noticed… just tend to go right down to the comments whenever. fixed it… thank you. :)
Read this. But be careful whether it works. I’m getting it done by a professional today. If they wont do it, I will be left with no choice but to go to a Toshiba center.
http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/nextoldesttothread42896.html
“In a last attempt, I decided to physically disconnect the internal keyboard and use an external (hoping the laptop would accept that). This in fact is very simple: there is a small strip immediately above the keyboard that can be popped out use a fingernail and then there are two screws. After that the keyboard can be tilted lose and there is a flat connector ribbon from the keyboard to the mainboard. The connector itself has some small latches on the side that can be lifted; in the closed position it squeezes the ribbon to hold it into place.
When I disconnected the keyboard, the laptop booted ok with no accupoint interference. Great! Then I noticed that the flat ribbon in fact had two connectors -a wider and a smaller one- joined at the end by a piece of plastic. The smaller one could either be the power or just maybe the accupoint. Since I wasn’t planning on using the keyboard (I assumed that tampering with the ribbon, might damage it beyond repair, but since that didn’t matter), I decided to use a piece of sticky tape to isolate the connectors of the smaller part of the ribbon and reinsert it (remember to lift the connector in order to do so).
And look at that! One working keyboard without accupoint interference on the mouse. ”
And yes this was bugging me on a laptop which wasnt mine. Grrrrrr.
Avinav> Thanks, but I use an Acer now. Don’t get me wrong; it wasn’t the accupoint problem, but the Toshiba served faithfully for several years before the screen hinge broke (seriously) and I had no choice but to say goodbye.