C610 Laptop Q from Dell Newbie

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

I've always been an IBM laptop guy, although I use a Dell desktop at work. My
wife wanted a laptop, and just didn't like my older IBM T20 that I gave her,
as I'm using a new model. I think she's crazy, but so be it.

So I just picked up an eBay C610, pretty well equipped. It came today, and I
have to say it's a nice unit. It's running XP Pro.

My problem was that I couldn't configure the touchpad, and the pointing stick
(which I personally prefer to the touchpad) was nonfunctional. As there was
no Synaptics icon down in the tray, I figured the drivers weren't installed by
the vendor.

After getting the inbuilt wireless working, I went to the Dell web site, found
the correct support page for the "input devices" for C610 computers, and upon
clicking the recommended link for the touchpad, I was directed to an
appropriate-looking Dell page to download the drivers. Unfortunately, that
link is bad - it reports that the file in question has been removed due to
being obsolete, and suggests another file with no indication as to how to
locate it. A Dell search didn't help.

I went to Google, and found another Synaptics laptop driver on the Dell site.
Having nothing better to do, I installed those drivers. Now I had a Synaptics
icon in the tray, and I was able to set a couple of the touchpad settings as I
want - the default of having the touchpad mimic the left mouse button seems
crazy, so it was nice to turn it off.

Unfortunately for me, the pointing stick still doesn't work, even though the
driver setup indicates that it (the stick) has been enabled.

Does anyone have any advice. In the back of my mind is the possibility that
the pointing stick is flat out broken. But at this point I have to first
assume a drivers issue.

Second question: a couple of the FN actions I see embossed on the keys don't
seem to function. Sleep works, for example, but the Setup capacity I see with
FN-F2 doesn't work. Ditto on several other FN activities. Am I talking
missing drivers here, or do I not understand the Big Picture.

Appreciate any words of wisdom here.

Art
Temporary usercode - to be deleted when spam starts. Use MyBrainHurts at this ISP to reach me