Touchpad irritatingly slow on Apple iBook G4 & dapper

I can confirm I have the same problem, and the workaround works for me also. My Ibook is a post-August 2005 12" 1.33 GHz ibook (the last version, the one they're selling now). In my case I didn't dist-upgrade from breezy (I'm keeping it in another partition), but I did a plain install from the 20060113 dapper CD image.

The touchpad works fine with breezy

I've found that properly configuring synaptics fixes the problem, and also gets rid of an issue where leaving the ibook to sleep for more than a critical amount of time (which I wasn't able to determine, around 10 minutes) leads to a dead touchpad on wakeup.

here is the interesting part of my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
        Driver "synaptics"
        Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
        Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
        Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
        Option "LeftEdge" "0"
        Option "RightEdge" "850"
        Option "TopEdge" "0"
        Option "BottomEdge" "645"
        Option "MinSpeed" "0.4"
        Option "MaxSpeed" "1"
        Option "AccelFactor" "0.03"
        Option "FingerLow" "55"
        Option "FingerHigh" "60"
        Option "MaxTapMove" "20"
        Option "MaxTapTime" "100"
        Option "TapButton1" "0"
        Option "TapButton2" "3"
        Option "TabButton3" "2"
        Option "HorizScrollDelta" "10"
        Option "VertScrollDelta" "30"
        Option "SHMConfig" "on"
EndSection

Make sure that "Device" points to "/dev/input/mice" (this was broken in my autoconfigured xorg.conf). Also make sure to use InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad" in ServerLayout (this was also broken).

if /var/log/Xorg.0.log complains that the synaptics module doesn't exist, try apt-getting xserver-xorg-input-synaptics (apparently the previous
xorg-driver-synaptics fails to make the driver available to xorg).

I can confirm the same issue (and the working of the workaround) with an oct05 Aluminium Powerbook 15"

btw, the options "RTCornerButton"/"LTCornerButton" are neat too if supported by the hardware... (they allow for emulating button 2/3 by tapping in the corners...)

Fix provided by Demetrio Girardi.

I've found that properly configuring synaptics fixes the problem, and also gets rid of an issue where leaving the ibook to sleep for more than a critical amount of time (which I wasn't able to determine, around 10 minutes) leads to a dead touchpad on wakeup.
here is the interesting part of my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file:
Section "InputDevice"
         Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
         Driver "synaptics"
         Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
         Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
         Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
         Option "LeftEdge" "0"
         Option "RightEdge" "850"
         Option "TopEdge" "0"
         Option "BottomEdge" "645"
         Option "MinSpeed" "0.4"
         Option "MaxSpeed" "1"
         Option "AccelFactor" "0.03"
         Option "FingerLow" "55"
         Option "FingerHigh" "60"
         Option "MaxTapMove" "20"
         Option "MaxTapTime" "100"
         Option "TapButton1" "0"
         Option "TapButton2" "3"
         Option "TabButton3" "2"
         Option "HorizScrollDelta" "10"
         Option "VertScrollDelta" "30"
         Option "SHMConfig" "on"
 EndSection
Make sure that "Device" points to "/dev/input/mice" (this was broken in my autoconfigured xorg.conf). Also make sure to use InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad" in ServerLayout (this was also broken). if /var/log/Xorg.0.log complains that the synaptics module doesn't exist, try apt-getting xserver-xorg-input-synaptics (apparently the previous xorg-driver-synaptics fails to make the driver available to xorg).