Phew.

After what felt like 7-to-10 days without my laptop, I picked it up from the Roseville Apple Store this afternoon.

It was a complete zoo there; line half-way to the door, people packed in the aisles, boxes of iPod Nano cases everywhere.

Crazy.

Anyway, the PowerBook is all shiny and clean, speakers work, mic works, modem is recognized, SuperDrive is burning a back-up as I write this. Yeah! Almost like it’s my birthday.

Oh, Sam – if you’re curious, PowerBooks go to Texas.

For about a week, the half inch on the far left and far right of my Powerbook’s trackpad were completely dead. Basically, it turned my 17″ Powerbook trackpad down to a 12″ Powerbook trackpad. These dead zones caused extremely flakey and erratic cursor behavior not to mention my mental image of the trackpad’s size was all messed up.

I was using SideTrack to add trackpad scrolling and had grown accustomed to placing my finger on the far left border (I’m left-handed) of the trackpad to scroll. These dead zones rendered that action completely useless. Thinking it might be SideTrack freaking out, I installed iScroll2. I got scrolling back, but only when my fingers were in the exact center of the trackpad. Way to awkward to actually be useful.

James from the Foundation suggested I open up the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences Pane and uncheck “Ignore accident trackpad input.” After un-checking, the entire trackpad became active again. Thanks James.

I think that option should be re-labeled “make trackpad smaller”.