Re: Dell Bluetooth Travel Mouse - more info

"Timothy Daniels" wrote:
"Timothy Daniels" wrote:
"Timothy Daniels" wrote:
Contrary to the printed setup directions, if you bought your
BT Travel Mouse separately from your Vista pre-installed
Dell laptop, you ought to install the driver software that is on
the provided CD. It turns out that the Bluetooth mouse driver
that is part of Vista doesn't control the pointer speed of the
laptop's touchpad independently of the Bluetooth mouse pointer
speed, and the horizontal scrolling controlled by the scroll wheel's
left/right tilt doesn't work with Vista's driver. Installing the control
software called "SetPoint" separates the touchpad and mouse
pointer speeds and enables the horizontal scrolling.

Since Logitech makes a full-sized Bluetooth mouse called
"MX900 Bluetooth Mouse" with the same features and controls,
and its software is called "SetPoint", I assume that Dell's
Bluetooth Travel Mouse is a Dell-branded Logitech product.

The Dell Bluetooth Travel Mouse is a cute and ergonomic
device, but unfortunately for those who dual-boot Windows
with Linux, Logitech doesn't make Linux drivers for its products,
and thus, there is no Linux driver for the Dell mouse..

*TimDaniels*


There is a new problem, now, having to do with what happens
after you shutdown in Vista. When Vista loads up for the next session,
the speed setting for the touchpad pointer is found to be Slow - probably
the default. This has been a problem for a couple years, now, as
reported here in Notebook Review:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3688873#post3688873
Somehow, the SetPoint software by Logitech, causes some settings
to revert to default or to disappear entirely upon shutdown or restart.
I also noticed that SetPoint disappeared from the Control Panel, so
un-installing it might be a problem, now. Of worry is that Logitech
advises to un-install the old version of SetPoint before installing the
new version 4.60, which came out in May of 2008, for mice carrying
their brand name. So experimenting with version 4.60 might be a
problem if I can't get rid of version 3.22.29 - the version for Dell's BT
Travel Mouse. It appears that Dell didn't thoroughly evaluate the
Bluetooth Travel Mouse for interaction with the existing touchpad
before they accepted the software from Logitech.

*TimDaniels*


I just got off the phone after more than 2 1/2 hours with a Dell
tech rep. After painstakingly un-installing and then re-installing drivers
and tediously starting up in Safe Mode and then selectively adding
services to a cleared Startup menu, she concluded that, yes, there is
an incompatibility between the touchpad driver by Synaptics and the
Bluetooth mouse driver by Logitech (called "SetPoint"). She was
unwilling to say that this incompatibility exists when the laptop and
mouse are bought together, but she did say that it exists for other Dell
laptops as well when the mouse is bought separately. I, personally,
think that the conflict exists even when they are bundled together in a
single purchase and Dell just never noticed it. In any event, the rep
said that it will be "researched", and she'll "contact" me about it in
a couple days, but I expect that there will be no solution.

*TimDaniels*

After another hour on the phone with an *American* Dell technician,
we found that a "happy medium" can be reached between the touchpad
and the Bluetooth Travel Mouse that is similar to the happy medium
achievable *without* the mouse's SetPoint software installed. In the
SetPoint window displayed by clicking the "castle" icon, you can check
either "Setpoint impmentation" or "OS implementation" for pointer speed
and acceleration. If the "Setpoint implementation" is chosen, the speeds
and accelerations of the touchpad and mouse can be set differently, but
the touchpad settings will always revert to Medium on restart, and the
Enhanced Accuracy will be un-checked. If the "OS implementation" is
chosen, the speed and acceleration of the touchpad settings will be used
for both devices, but they will both persist through startups, and the
Enhanced Accuracy setting for the touchpad will persist as well. So if
you want persistence for the touchpad settings, you have to use the
"OS implementation" mode. In case you've forgotten why the SetPoint
software by Logitech was used in the first place, it was necessary to
make the Fore/Back buttons and the Horizontal Scrolling (by tilting the
scroll wheel) work.

*TimDaniels*


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