My Sony Vaio SZ650 is pretty nice. It's light, has lots of features and is generally reliable.
However, like many of these people my touchpad makes the cursor go
backward sometimes. This apparent cursor reversal results from the touchpad's mapping rotating 180°,
so the scroll area is on the left and upside-down. Reversal appears to be random, occurs at boot or resume
and continues for the duration of the session. Other abnormal cursor motions have been observed but reversal
is the dominant feature.
Vaio SZ notebook users have suffered from electric shocks
emanating from the palmrest, which unusually is made from
aluminium instead of the more usual plastic. The idea for the following procedure came from
the knowledge that touchpads work on capacitance and they may be affected by stray charge in the
palmrest. Support for this hypothesis was given to the author by a Sony support rep., who
confirmed that Sony was aware of occasional touchpad reversal caused by faulty mounting of the
touchpad.
The following notes detail a procedure for insulating the touchpad from the palmrest to prevent
cursor reversal.
If you choose to follow these instructions, you are very likely invalidating your warranty;
do so at your own risk.
- Download a copy of the disassembly manual by
googling for vgnsz.pdf
- The important pages to read and print out are 'Keyboard' and 'Palmrest'
- Equip yourself with precision (jewellers') screwdrivers, insulation tape, a sharp blade and bamboo spatula
- Turn your notebook off, unplug from mains and remove the battery
- Close the lid, flip the notebook over so you are looking at its underside
- Remove the screws that retain the keyboard (1) and palmrest (2,3,4)
- Now follow the instructions from vgnsz.pdf to remove the keyboard and palmrest. There are 2 little clips
that you have to push in, then slide your bamboo spatula under the keyboard and lift from the back
- Retract the keyboard and lean it against the frame of the screen; if you want you can disconnect the ribbon and remove it completely
- Unscrew 3 screws (5,6,7) that retain the palmrest. Then slide the palmrest out and flip it over
- The touchpad is in 3 main parts: a PCA (a) the buttons (b) and the touchpad itself (c)
- Remove the 4 screws (8,9,10,11) that retain the touchpad
- Carefully peel off and stick the filament tape (d) somewhere for safe-keeping
- Disengage the PCA and pop out the buttons (they should all come very easily)
- Slide the touchpad away from you ('up' in the photo). Note the origami-like tidiness of construction
- Note the touchpad is a silicon-like wafer with a mat on top; the wafer is normally mounted directly against the palmrest
- Apply a single layer of insulation tape to the surfaces of the palmrest that the touchpad normally contacts. Be careful to
place the tape beneath the bracket that holds the touchpad. The only thing your tape should adhere to is the palmrest itself
- Trim the tape using a sharp blade and the edge of the mounting hole as a mask. Be careful to avoid cutting anything else (including yourself!)
Reassemble
- Slide the touchpad back into place, replace the buttons, PCA, 4 screws and filament tape
- Replace the palmrest and its 3 top screws
- Replace the keyboard
- Replace the 4 screws in the base of the notebook
- Test it! If one of your devices is no longer working, check that you replaced the ribbon connectors...
- The finished appearance:
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This file last modified 1842hrs 21 July 2008 © Michael Doube 2004-2008 :: Designed to be interoperable and standards-compliant. Looks best with Mozilla Firefox
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