Mousepad problem on Ubuntu 10.10 for HP Pavilion dm4-1160

I have an HP pavilion dm4 and have installed 64-bit ubuntu 10.10.

The touchpad works fine in Win7 but is totally erratic in Ubuntu. If I put more than one finger on the touchpad, the cursor jumps all over the place erratically and randomly submits clicks. The right-click function of the touchpad also doesn't work.

In the mouse settings, the option for multi-touch is grayed out, but the touchpad is obviously still registering multi-touch info. I did try disabling mouse clicks to no avail; the cursor would still jump around erratically.

I've tried installing gsynaptics, but that doesn't help. I've also tried a few scripts provided by other people for enabling multi-touch when the option is greyed out, but that doesn't help. I've also tried uninstalling and reinstalling the synaptics xorg touchpad driver with no luck.

Finally I found a great post with a script to fix this : http://sansmicrosoft.blogspot.com/2010/10/pavilion-dm4-1160-touchpad-erratic-bis.html

Comparing processors

With many different processors in the market (AMD, Intel) and versions in them (Celeron, i3, i5, i7, Phenom, Athlon, Turion) it has been increasingly difficult to compare prices and performance. I found the following sites extremely useful :-

1. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/
   PassMark Software has delved into the thousands of benchmark results that PerformanceTest users have posted to its web site and produced five Intel vs AMD CPU charts to help compare the relative speeds of the different processors. Included in this list are CPUs designed for servers and workstations (Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processors), desktop CPUs (Intel Core2 Quad, Intel Core i7, Intel Core2 Extreme and AMD Phenom II processors), in addition to mobile CPUs.
2. http://www.notebookcheck.net/
   Provides serious and competent information about laptops and notebooks. Notebookcheck provides tests, reviews, news, technical information (like CPU and GPU comparisons) and links to reviews by other sites.

Remove open jdk and installed Sun Java on Ubuntu

Ubuntu installs OpenJDK as default Java since version 8.04. Many programs require Sun Java to work and just installing Sun Java did not solve the issue for me. There are many guides that help you uninstall and reinstall many packages. The simplest method is to

Remove the following from Ubuntu Software Center :-

1. openJDK Java6 runtime
1. icedtea 6 plugin
2. libaccess bridge java
2. openJDK java 6 web start

and then install:-

1. sun-java6-jre
2. sun-java6-jdk
3. sun-java6-plugin 

soapUI Pro version!

I am a fan of soapUI and having installed soapUI free version on my new PC a few days back I realized there was a promotion for their 5th anniversary : http://www.eviware.com/loadUI-News/promotion-now-closed.html

It was to find secret codes on their web site which meant you had to read most of their pages. I did that and got myself a soapUI Pro license. Wohoo! The license key just arrived today and I installed it right away…

I have used soapUI free and Pro versions (company license) extensively in the past I am very familiar with the interface and the features. I just love this product!

Crop functionality in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007

Having recently moved to Ms Office Outlook 2007 (phew!) I noticed that we now have the crop photos functionality. This was missing in the previous versions. No more Ms PowerPoint tricks!