Partially disabling touchpad

[xwb]

Sometimes, when I type, the pad of my left had goes over the touchpad and it selects some random chunk of text. The next character I type deletes the entire chunk. I don't always notice this. When I re-read my document, I find that there are random chunks missing.

I know I can disable the touchpad and use a mouse but that is not always convenient. I would still like to use the touchpad but just disable this chunk deletion. A colleague showed me a setting that disables this "feature" but I can't remember what it was called. I had a look at all the touchpad options on my laptop but I cannot see anything obvious. I don't know whether it exists on every laptop or only on my colleague's laptop. Unfortunately, I can't remember who showed this to me (it was about 4 years ago).

The question is: is there a setting to disable your pad touching the touchpad and removing random chunks of text and still leave the touchpad enabled?

 

[Salem]

Perhaps

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=touchpad+palm+rejection

Plus the name of your laptop.


--
If you dance barefoot on the broken glass of undefined behaviour, you've got to expect the occasional cut.

 

[goombawaho]

There are setting for the touchpad where you can turn on/off gesturing, multi-finger b.s., enable right click area, pinch/zoom, etc. I turn all that off for my customers because you can do all kinds of weird things when your fingers touch the wrong area or multiple fingers touch.

 

[xwb]

This is a pain - it is a work laptop and they've locked down the mouse settings. I'll have to take it to IT and tell them what I want done. It is a pain with work laptops - they lock down so much - even a USB floppy doesn't work.

 

[goombawaho]

Oh, I've got to ask. What are you doing with a floppy drive in 2020?

 

[xwb]

It is a flaw in some of the secure systems.

On some of these secure systems, there is no network access and only three devices allowed are floppies, CDs and specially encrypted memory sticks. Floppy drives have not been disabled because they don't expect anyone to have one.

CDs have to be finalized so it is a waste of a CD if all you have to copy is a 50 byte file. The memory sticks go through some strange access procedure and take ages to start as they run checks through the entire memory stick. They don't write any rules on floppies. They don't say you can use them and they don't say you can't.

Obviously someone noticed the flaw.

 

[goombawaho]

Thank you. That was a $5 response!!