Controlling the touchpad

I'm on a trip and forgot a mouse, so have had to deal with the touchpad and be reminded why I took so long to buy a laptop and why I don't use gestures in Opera. This is an Aspire One 722. After searching some threads and articles online, I've turned off most of the touchpad's functionality but one thing above all remains and is maddening. It seems that about half the time I move the cursor across the screen, even at the speed of light, something I don't want opens, whether or not it was in the same zip code as the cursor's path. A second version of that is when I move the cursor, overshoot and then quickly return to where I want, whatever was at the turnaround point opens. Another variation is single clicking in the middle of a tab in a browser (opera), far away from the X, often closes the tab. Hovering over something for however short a time automatically opens it the first time, and to add insult to injury when I do it again right away at the desired point, nothing happens. Or it closes it, such as having the cursor momentarily pass over the browser's close button closes the page. Another variation - perhaps something different: I'll be typing away and all of a sudden the cursor is at the beginning of the text. Well, I'm sure you get the point: I want to control what goes on, not have the touchpad doing it's own thing (none of these things happen with my desktop, but of course it doesn't have a "multi-gesture" touchpad. The solution is probably pretty simple, but I haven't been able to find it and would appreciate being pointed in the right direction. Thanks,

 

First of all, if you've been using a normal mouse for a while, you might want to clean the touchpad itself. You've probably got a little build up of sweat and other bodily stuff covering it because you haven't been using your finger to wipe across it all the time.

Next check your touchpad settings, adjust the PalmCheck feature so you're not accidentally moving the mouse with the base of your hand while typing.

Decrease its sensetivity to touch for clicks as well. To stop the mouse moving at the speed of light change the cursor speed.

 

PalmCheck is at the bottom of the red zone (one down from max) and I think you misunderstood the speed of light reference. The point was that I could take the cursor at the speed of light to Mars and then dunk it in the bottonm of the Pacific and chances are that a page or app would close or something open or whatever on screen. Yes, if you were sitting next to me you'd see it's that bad. A start would be knowing how to disable the "feature" that opens or closes a page, function, etc., just by hovering over it for a millisecond, or moving by it at the speed of light.