My theory for this issue is that when a cosmic ray goes through the touchpad,
it makes the cursor suddenly move somewhere else on the screen. Maybe some
touchpads are more sensitive to this than others.
Just kidding, but who knows if it might be true or not? Some amateur radio
operators have postulated the same phenomenon (cosmic ray interference) for the
fairly common problem of a stable linear amplifier with high amplification
factors on the tubes suddenly going into a vhf parasitic oscillation for no
reason at all. A parasitic on an amplifier like that manifests itself as a
device just sitting there running in receive mode (not being used to transmit)
and suddenly goes off like an M80 firecracker and blows up a few components in
the 3 KV circuitry feeding the tube plates. A few have theorised that a cosmic
ray can pass through the plate of the tube, exciting the normally stable
circuit into a resonant vhf oscillation that exceeds the component limits, and
up she goes in smoke.
Luckily our touchpads aren't that dangerous, but my experience so far is of
seeing Jaye's problem on many more laptops than not, probably on about 70 or 80
percent of the laptops with touchpads that have been in my immediate
environment. Most of them are windows machines, with the exceptions being my
Vaio in Debian and Jaye's with Kubuntu (if I'm not mistaken). Of 6 Dell
laptops issued here at work, only one does not have this problem with all of
them being WinXP Pro OS's.
Bob Reed
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