Thinkpads Forum

I've been looking out for X-series machines for family members who had seen me using various X60 and X200's.

I recently bought at a great price, an X201i, a model I had never heard of before. It is in superb condition and working well in every way except the one thing I bought the X201 for.

The touchpad is perfect when i first switch on, and I can navigate freely and easily with the second finger that I traditionally use. After a few minutes, the response to the finger gets progressively worse, to the point where it becomes very awkward to use. If I then swap to my third finger, the responsiveness comes back and it's OK for a good few more minutes, but eventually that finger/pad combination degenerates.

What can this be? Is it a known "feature" on these machines? The only thing I can think of is that there might be some coating, perhaps of some cleaning material, on the pad, coupled with some heating that causes this. If I take the non-working finger and use it on the touchpad of the SL510 that I'm typing this on, it works perfectly.

If it is a question of cleaning the pad, what should I try cleaning it with?

Isopropyl Alcohol (91% or higher) works great on almost any surface.
Use it sparingly on a piece of cloth, making sure nothing 'drips' inside the touchpad.
Also check if cleaning your fingertips may help.
Body oil/grease/dirt could have a detrimental effect.
Worst case: get a new palm rest.

In the end I cleaned the touchpad with one of the little sealed wipes for glasses sold in supermarkets. No visible dirt came off, but it seemed a little better.

I then went into all the settings that I could find, but most of them made things worse and I had to go back to defaults.

Then we had a thunderstorm with torrential rain, and the pad came good, but the next morning it was partly back to its old ways. This implied to me that it was just on the edge of working correctly, so I went through all the settings again.

This time I found PalmCheck, which I hadn't seen before. Adjusting this down improved things and then adjusting Touch Sensitivity one notch towards Light made the whole thing come good.

I can't see why the PalmCheck is needed on this X201i because the pad is recessed. It was set fairly aggressively. Ironically, the setting on the SL510 that I'm typing on seems to be "Off" and it has a non-recessed pad. Both machines were "as supplied" until I started poking around.