Sent a mail to local Acer service centers asking whether they can replace Alps touchpad with Synaptics one. Waiting for the answer…
The Alps GlidePoint device is the best thing you need to start looking for a mouse for your laptop. It is low-resolution, inaccurate, and completely non-finger-friendly. However all vendors make some laptops with Alps and some with Synaptics, even within one product line. C’mon Acer, was it that expensive to ship a decent input device?
I visited city.com store again after buying this laptop and checked all laptops against touchpad responsiveness and sensitivity… And there were only 2 variants. Those that performed well and those that performed in a weird way, so this is pretty common :(
Update (2008-07-15)
So I got a response from one of our authorized service centers. It is promising enough as well as daunting. They can order Synaptics touchpad but in case European Acer part stock does not have Synaptics, they will receive Alps. Well, in worst case I’ll have 2 unusable pointing devices (which is not that bad, since sometimes i want to break this crappy device and having a spare part is a plus :) ).
The FRU of this unit is 56.TK901.001, TOUCHPAD BD.SYNAP. It seems that Acer tends not to differentiate these pointing devices. Yes, they are interchangeable, yes, they both work. Yet one of them is superior than the other. The price ranges from $12 to $25 (work is not included) which I am willing to pay to have Alps touchpad replaced with Synaptics one. To be or not to be :) ?
