Ever since I took possession of my ThinkPad T60p, it has suffered from an infuriating fault. When I am typing, occasionally, and without warning, the cursor will jump to somewhere else in the document. Sometimes it will even jump somewhere else and highlight a chunk of text at the same time. This means I can be typing quickly and inadvertently delete a sentence from three paragraphs earlier in the document.
It drives me insane.
I figured out the problem today. My trackpoint (the red nipple) was configured to support "Press-to-Select".
I must have been brushing past it as I typed and making it think I had clicked the mouse. So, the insert cursor was jumping to wherever the mouse was positioned - and highlighting a section if it sensed that I was pressing for a longer period of time as I brushed over it.
The solution was simple
Control Panel -> Mouse -> Ultra-Nav Tab -> TrackPoint Settings -> Deselect "Enable Press-to-Select"
Phew!
4 comments:
At least that one had a fix.
I use an optical mouse by Microsoft, which is much nicer than a ball mouse but occasionally it makes the cursor whoosh off in one direction. I haven't tried any other models so I don't know how they compare. I'll try cleaning the optics with cotton buds and gin and let you know if it helps.
This is one area where window managers with "click-to-focus" on windows are definitely better than "focus-on-enter". This would still be true without this particular cursor problem because you might still jog the mouse with your elbow (and type your banking password into MSN Messenger!)
I find optical mice are very sensitive to the surface on which they sit. If I use mine on an even slightly shiny surfact, it jumps about unpredicably.
I wonder if you're experiencing something similar?
A sensible notion would be to have non-standard behaviours disabled by default. I know, a ridiculous thought on my account.
But it's a FEATURE!!!
(Actually.... I suspect I may have selected the option myself when I first set the machine up in one of those high-speed "get everything configured" rituals that one follows)
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