Synaptics driver enables multitouch gestures on older trackpads
By Donald Melanson 
posted March 19th 2010 2:38PM
posted March 19th 2010 2:38PM
Haven't updated your laptop's trackpad driver lately? Then you may well want to consider doing so, at least if your laptop is equipped with a Synaptics trackpad. As a user on the Hardware Zone forums discovered, the latest Synaptics driver seems to enable multitouch gestures on older laptops that didn't previously support them, including two-finger scrolling, and three-finger click. What's more, while the drivers themselves come from HP, they should work just fine on other laptops with a Synaptics trackpad. Hit up the link below to try it out for yourself.
Yet another way that Synaptics kills Alps.
That and the way Alps touchpads fritz out randomly and erroneously register presses sometimes.
@manekineko2 I got Alps, and it sucks. Randomly freezes sometimes on Windows, but it work fine on Linux :)
@manekineko2
I love my toshiba nb205. By far the best netbook on the market. However, the alps trackpad has driven me to the point where it is going on ebay tomorrow. No multitouch, and the thing just randomly spazzes out every 3-5 minutes. Don't ever buy a laptop with an alps trackpad as the main input device, you will regret it.
@CaptainPlanet
Really? I've got a Dell E6500 Latitude, they're supposedly professional line.
Love almost everything about it, but the Alps touchpad, which freaks out in Windows and Linux. Forums are rife with people complaining about and verifying the fact that it's freak out tendencies also occur in Linux and other OS's, meaning it's a hardware problem.
I'm not sure I can buy another laptop that has an Alps touchpad. I remember having this problem with my Alps touchpad on another computer way back in 2000, and they still haven't fixed it. I forgot my vow to never go Alps again then and I'm paying for it now.
@CaptainPlanet
"I got Alps, and it sucks. Randomly freezes sometimes on Windows, but it work fine on Linux :)"
You may want to get that looked at.
dammit, i don't know what's happening.
can anyone help me? it's installing version 6.2 instead of 6.5 as shown in the picture! what the hell is going on?
i uninstalled the drivers before installing these and tried installing it 3 times already...
@manekineko2 Well I actually think the synaptics multitouch is a bit funky...I disabled all the multitouch even though I had all of them.
But the real silliness is the fact that Engadget is posting this as news...it's been known for YEARS that the multitouch features are just disabled in many OEM driver sets but installing a driver from a multitouch enabled driver would unlock all kinds of gestures...this was news...in 2008
@manekineko2 Thankfully I'm not the only one with a crappy Alps touchpad. At least I use my laptop (VAIO FW) on my desk with a mouse hooked up almost all the time.
@CaptainPlanet My warranty is probably out, so I might just sell it and get an ION Netbook :)
uhu...I wonder what apple has to say about that?
@mnotme I was thinking the same thing. Doesn't Apple own multi-touch, the Pacific Ocean, and a few people's souls?
@mnotme
SUE SUE SUE
@mnotme
I have no idea why you got down-ranked on this one, pretty good humor.
Or is it??
@mnotme
Will this new drive work on my late 2008 MacBook Pro? Or will Apple force me to buy me a new one for that feature.. oh bother..
@mnotme Apple does NOT own a patent on multi-touch. They have patents on a few aspects of their implementation of a multi-touch based interface, but not on multi-touch itself.
Whoever said they did should be hung up by his/her toenails. It's just not true.
@Mr Blue
I found that any synaptics pad works on this unlike the old modded drivers where 7.0 didnt work
@WindowsPhone7Series No brains Apple fanboys? but wait! there is an app for that :)
awesome. I always liked synaptic pads cause the drivers are stable and highly customizable but it's always nice to see a big hardware vendor standing by his product (especially older hardware generations)
thumbs up synaptics!
If only it had ChiralMotion.
...or does it? That's by far my favorite way to scroll with a trackpad.
@shifuimam
if you go in the synaptic directory in program files there are alot of demo videos. they show pinch to zoom, chiral motion, and many other stuff, but I didn't see these things in the settings. Wonder how can I make them work.
@mominshahab
Synaptics has had chiral motion and multitouch for a while but it seems some of the older touchpads don't have full features.
You'll have to update and see if your touchpad supports it or if you just get basic things like 2 finger scrolling.
@Kerensky97 all Trackpads support multitouch now via this driver.
Hopefully it works on my touchpad, though not as useful as Apple in particular would like people to think multitouch touchpads do have their uses.
@CarliT Ok, so you want to insult apple while still praising their innovations? No dice.
@jellotime91
LOL. Has he somehow sinned against Lord Steve?
You serious????
@shoxite not only does it work it also works well. Im real impressed with this :)
Curses...Alps!
Didn't Apple use synaptics pads at some point? Or was that only for iPods?
I just installed them on my ASUS G50Vt-X1(win 7,5min install,3 restarts needed),this track pad does not support multi touch even with modded drivers....until now!!
It works !!
What a great way to breathe life into my aging dinosaur of a laptop
I believe Ubuntu has touchpad drivers with some rudimentary gesture support. I wasn't super impressed last time I tried it out. Hopefully this works better.
Wait this is not new from Synaptics my laptop has been doing this for quite some time well over a year (and its a very old laptop). You can even set sections of the pad to do different things like top left to "back" top right to "Forward" etc or whatever keyboard shortcuts etc. I don't feel compelled to use two finger scrolling its just a gimmick to me.
@NizP Yeah - this feature became available some time int he 90s (my 1997 micron goBook supported it). For some reason Synaptics took it out of the GUI driver interface, but its always been available by doing some tweaking in the registry.
This certainly not something new, and its barely even multi touch. the ability to detect a wider point of contact has always been available for capacitive touchpads, and Synaptics has had the ability to utilize it for well over a decade.
ALPS, on the other hand, is fail. I had to coat my ALPS pad in masking take just to get it to recognize my finger.
Alittle late, a notebookreview.com forum member modded some ACER synatics drivers for multi finger gestures and chiralscroll back in 2008. :)
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=305521
Starts at post #14.
@Lego Yeah and look at the end of that thread. :: Waves ::
You guys don't understand,this is very new,My track pad does not support multitouch on the hardware,but now it does...I have tried the moded drivers,this is the stuff,for real.
This driver is been around for months now.
@staticjethro
Almost a year, actually. I've had multitouch scrolling on my Acer Aspire One as long as I can remember...
@staticjethro
No, those are new touchpads with multitouch built in.
This one enables it for old laptops (works for me and I bought mine in 2005!)
@RioRyan
Good job, Apple users have had it for about 5 years now.
I upgraded to the latest version of Scrybe (Synaptics Gesture software), and it installed the latest version v15.0.9 of the driver for the touchpad as well.
I suggest that people use install scrybe from http://www.uscrybe.com/ to get full functionality.
@crash21 I second that. I downloaded Scrybe on my older laptop, and it works like a charm.
it's asking me to uninstall my older version of synaptics in order to update? Should I do this? It seems kinda sketchy to me. I guess if I cant just install the update over top of it, it leaves me no choice.
also, has anyone tried scrybe? it seems kinda cool. It might take some time to learn though.
@dmbphan041
It does that...Me thinks the Trackpad has firmware,all Synaptics updates are like that...
@dmbphan041 I wouldn't bother with scrybe, I tried running it for a while, it wasn't responsive and there were waaaay too many gestures to try to learn. Nice idea, bad implementation.
Link is broken....
@JKopp13 Hazaaah!
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp47501-48000/sp47815.exe
@Sonicjet
waaaaaaaa, SP47815 is 32-bit and I have Windows 7 64-bit...
any chance there is a 64-bit version around somewhere?
@GuyOnline I have 64 bit and it worked anyways...