Vocal Voices

My laptop is in computer hospital having the lid and a few bits replaced because the hinge has failed, so I'm using my little netbook. There is a very annoying little glitch about it which I can't solve. I have typed a fairly lengthy passage and suddenly, because I must have accidentally touched the wrong key or combination of keys, the whole thing disappears. I have to copy every few lines so that I don't have to do it all again. Have you any idea which keys I'm accidentally touching so that I can avoid them? I've already had to type this post twice.

Another irritating thing is that when I stop typing for a few seconds, the cursor takes itself off to a random part of the text so that I'm typing in the middle of the previous paragraph. Any clues as to what I'm doing?

When using my laptop I sometimes do a similar muck up and have never been sure which key combinations I have accidently hit. I know it is never Ctrl + A to "select all", nor is it Ctrl + X to "cut" the text, but it does happen.

What I do know is that Ctrl + Z saves that day!!!! It brings everything back. That's Ctrl+Z

As for the cursor drifting..... If you are using the track pad it could be set too sensitive. If it is a ball mouse it might need a clean of the ball and the rollers. If it is an optical mouse the light could need a clean, or it might be the surface it is being used on.

I'll remember the Ctrl+Z in fact I'll write it on a sticky and put it on my netbook desktop. It's such an annoying little quirk which only happens on the netbook, never on the laptop, probably because the keyboard is smaller.

I use the trackpad and an optical mouse for different things. The mouse is on a hard mousemat. I think it's more likely to be the trackpad settings being too sensitive so I'll have a look at that and fiddle about until I get it right.

I got the laptop back just now, several days before I expected it to be ready, so I won't need the netbook for a while now, only in emergencies when a grandchild has commandeered the laptop.

Thanks for the help Frank, especially the Ctrl+Z.

To my finger my laptop (widescreen full keyboard) is probably similar to your netbook to yours.

You might like to google for keyboard shortcuts Liz, some of them are way faster than mousing around.

It's probably the trackpad.

I had to go through similar when I refreshed my alienware. I'd reduced the sensitivity of the trackpad. What happens is your hand bumps on it, drags and selects the text. When you continue writing, it overwrites the selected text.

Annoying.

You can set the sensitivity in the control panel->Hardware->Mouse->Synaptics Settings.

There seems to be a thing called "Elan Smart Pad Multi-Finger" which gives all sort of options one of which is Palm Tracking so I'll fiddle around with that until I get it right. Thanks guys.

Yep, it's the palm tracking.

The problem with setting it to extreme values is that the trackpad becomes quite unresponsive to taps. It's a balance thing.