Any way to disable a pointing (mouse) device?

[charles.finkel]

Hi, I have a bit of a unique issue. I am using the IBM UltraNav keyboard on my iMac, which has two additional pointing devices - a TrackPoint, and a touch pad. I want to disable the TouchPad, which I've had no problem doing in Windows. But in Mac OS X, I can't figure out how to do it. I am constantly brushing over the touch pad accidentally which throws off the mouse cursor. Does anybody know how to disable it? Thanks in advance,

Charles

[Steve77]

Hi Charles,

I'm sorry that I cannot answer your question - not yet, at least. I would like to buy the Lenovo keyboard but your post is the only indication that it can work with a Mac (I have a MacBook Pro with OS X). Where did you get the driver from? Have you encountered any problems other than the one stated in your post? Any success solving that one?

Thanks,
Steve

[charles.finkel]

No drivers were needed, I just plugged it in and everything worked, except for the blue IBM Fn keys. The only other problem I had is that if I tried moving the trackpoint in one direction and the mouse at the same time in the opposite direction too quickly, the cursor would sometimes jump to the edge of the screen. I like doing this to kind of "hedge" my pointing for more accuracy, but it doesn't work so well for a mac. (They always say to use two hands to drive a car, why not two to point your cursor?)

I did actually solve the touch pad problem, but not in software - I cut out a piece of an old leather eye glass case and placed in on the touch pad; now it doesn't receive input.

Now however, I'm not using that keyboard at all. I have a Lenovo laptop running a synergy server which I use to connect to my Mac. So now I can disable the touch pad in software, and I can do my hedging!

[Steve77]

Thank you very much. I can now order the travel keyboard version with some confidence it will work. Great low-tech "hardware" solution re: touch pad problem!

[charles.finkel]

One thing to note is that I used USBOverdrive to get the speed and acceleration up, as you may find that the track point moves extremely slowly on the Mac.