I had an XL2 which I returned because it kept "freezeing" up on me that DID NOT have the pointing stick mouse device. Its built in Synaptics Pad had all sorts of great functions including virtual scrolling, tap zones, snap to default and many other useful properties. When I received my new XL3 I felt like I had reverted back to the stoneage! None of the Synaptic features I had become accustomed to in the short time I had the XL2 were present on the XL3. I called Winbook Support and they said it was because I had an extra "feature" pointing stick. I wish I knew how to disable the useless pointing stick and make the touchpad the "host" but Winbook Support said they couldn't tell me how to do it. I received some information from Synaptics regarding the configuration. The literature says there are 3 configuration methods.

Stick as "host", TouchPad as guest in "Transparent" mode, (seems to be the configuration I'm hoping for) - In this configuration the pointing stick is attached directly to the system KBC and the TouchPad is attached to the pointing stick. However the pointing stick is equipped with a "transparent" mode. In this mode the host does have access directly to the TouchPad. In order to utilize the Synaptics driver, the user should follow these three steps:

1) Uninstall existing pointing stick driver.
2) Enter BIOS to change pointing device mode to TouchPad only.
3) Install the Synaptics driver.

Sounds simple, but no one at Tech support can tell me what configuration method the system is set up as.
Does anyone have any information regarding this?

Go into the BIOS configuration (by pressing Del during bootup) and then set the pointer device to "touchpad and ext PS2," or something like that. That disables the trackpoint and the synaptics driver works just fine.

My XL2 BIOS has the configuration trackpoint and ext ps/2 mouse. Nothing about touchpoint only... does anyone know how to disable this useless trackpoint so i can use the synaptics drivers? PLEAAAASE!

When it comes to being able to disable the track point and leave the touch pad active, there is no way to do this from the bios level. The reason for this being that the track point is set up as the primary point device at a hardware (i.e. motherboard) level.

The XL, XLi, XL2 and Xl3 all use the same setup when it comes to motherboards on the units with touch pad and track point. So for all of these machine you are not able to disable just the track point.


Thank you for your post,

Chris
WinBook Technical Support