Hi Acer community
I had this laptop since May and was very satisfied with it however the one thing that bugged me since day 0 was that touchpad and the bloatware.
[Software fix for erratic touchpad]
The touchpad being erratic and inaccurate, at times when i try to move my cursor over a small distance it would not detect and then jump past the point i want it to hit, it was driving me insane.
I tried the firmware update that acer provided, installed the newer drivers from synaptics and also the ELAN I2C filter driver, it didnt do anything!
Forums all over the internet esp from the dell forums regarding the XPS15 suggested disabling the "enhance pointer precision" in the pointer options tab under mouse settings from the control panel, this bandaid solution did indeed improve but more importantly it told me that it was a software issue from crappy windows 10 precision touchpad drivers.
I came across this reddit thread where they disabled the PTP drivers and installed the legacy synaptic drivers over PS/2:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/3nbjbp/yes_a_solutionactual_working_fix_xps_laptops/
While their method could not be replicated on our acer laptops exactly by disabling the I2C bus in the device manager, Acer has provided a nice bios option that can disable the I2C bus via the bios:
1) Follow the instructions in this link to change the touchpad settings to "Basic" in the BIOS:
http://acer.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/36865/~/changing-the-precision-touchpad-settings-in-the-bios
1.5) Reboot back into windows and you will realise your gestures and 2-finger scrolls do not work at the moment but fret not!
2) In your device manager, a new PS/2 Device should appear under mice and other pointing devices
3) Download and extract the PS/2 synaptic drivers via this link:
http://drivers.synaptics.com/Synaptics_v19_0_19_1__C__x86-x64__Win10__Signed__MS_Win10_UXUI_PS2_SMbus.zip
4) Right click on the PS/2 Device and update driver, locating the inf file for the driver of to the x64 folder.
5) Select Synaptics PS/2 Port Touchpad and install and now your PS/2 devices is a synaptics PS/2 touchpad:
6) Reboot as instructed and volia!
7) You should have an additional tab in your mouse options to access the synaptics settings, adjust the various settings to your liking and you can have your gestures and 2 finger scoll back:
I believe this should work for most V/VN series laptops, do let me know if they work and if you enjoy the laptop on legacy synaptics drivers instead of **bleep**ty windows 10 precision touchpad drivers.
[Hardware fix for shakiness]
The touchpad was flimsy/shaky to me and it made a bang for buck laptop feel cheaper than it had to. The solution to that was to open the laptop and placed 2 sponges(melamine) where the white boxes are, there were thick enough to get the right solid built feel of the touchpad by removing the shakiness/play but thin enough to allow me to still click the button. For my laptop there was already a black sponge on one side of the touchpad but I believe it was too little to remove the play from the touchpad.
P.S: Bloatware was an easy fix, reinstalling windows 10 with a clean image, in case those were also wondering you do not need a CD-key as the key is embedded in your uefi bios and it will not prompt you for it during installation or setup of windows and it will automatically be authenticated.
