2 Finger Scrolling, Alps touchpad, Dell Inspiron 1545

I recently bought an Inspiron 1545 and absolutely cannot stand not being able to 2-finger scroll. The "side pad" function works poorly at best, and is so undependable that I am resorted to using a mouse whenever possible.

How on earth can I get my Inspiron 1545 with an Alps touchpad to have 2 finger scrolling similar to Mac systems? Is it even possible?

Also, I might add that I have done a lot of research, and it seems the synaptics touchpads can be reworked to do 2 finger scrolling, but I have found very little literature about the Alps touchpads.

 

never even heard of that brand, we kinda reverse engineered some drivers for synaptics to make it work but I never tried them.

The EEE netbook I have comes with all the great 2 finger gestures factory stock and it is really nice. i dont even use my mouse with the EEE because its so easy.

 

ALPS Electronics makes most of the new Dell touchpads. Their drivers dont seem to have much in the way of customizability--no gestures to speak of besides their cheesy "spiral scrolling" which, just like the side bar scrolling, only works 25% of the time, and is extraordinarily clunky.

However I do know that most of these stock drivers have most of the touchpad features disabled. I am just crossing my fingers that this particular pad can get 2 finger gestures enabled through a bit of patching and/or file editing.

If i can't resolve this touchpad problem i'm going to return the laptop and keep looking until I can find something that has something reasonable

 

I have a Dell with an Alps touchpad, and I just use the one-finger side-of-the-touchpad scrolling, and I have no problem with it. I think you'll get used to it after a day or two. It may help to adjust both the touchpad sensitivity and the width of the scroll regions.

 

I agree. It's not as good as two finger scrolling but spiral scrolling + setting the area to wide works well for me.

 

I was really disappointed to see that Dell is using ALPs pads in their new laptops. I have been hunting for something similar to http://code.google.com/p/two-finger-scroll/
for the ALPs pad, but I have been unable to find anything yet. I know that most of these new pads have multi touch capabilities, but it looks like the drivers are lacking in support for development. Call Dell and complain about it, I have. Hopefully drivers with more functionality will be released.

 

^That little app you linked is great; I used it all the time on my Studio 1535 with an ALPS pad. Two finger scrolling and multitouch tapping work just as you would expect, and the program itself is virtually weightless.

Not all Dells use ALPS, btw. The Studio 1555 and the Studio XPS series use Synaptics.

 

Personally, I find that spiral scrolling destroys two-finger scrolling. I scroll through pages and pages with spiral scroll, without my finger ever leaving the touchpad.