I searched google for a while (which BTW is how we fix 99% of problems we dont’ already know how to fix) and found some interesting stuff.

#1, The only people that ever seem to have this problem are Sony Vaio owners

#2, see this link to a discussion thread, offering a few solutions that seemed to work. I am especially intrigued by the one involving electrical tape

http://www.techsupportforum.com/hardware-support/laptop-support/123442-solved-vaio-touchpad-reversed-3.html

#3, A link to the electrical tape fix. I don’t know if the laptop model in this fix is the same as yours but probably close enough. Apaprently the metal casing of the laptop is causing some sort of a short that does this.

http://doube.org/sztp.html

My instinct tells me to just replace the touchpad all together, but its worth trying these easy fixes first.

I bought a Sony Vaio a few months ago. For the most part it works well, but the mousepad goes opposite of the direction I move about 90% of the time. If I plug a mouse in through USB it works fine. Sony can’t resolve the problem over the phone, and told me I can send it in to San Diego to get it fixed — with a 10 day turnaround! There has to be a better way. Maybe I need to bring it into a local shop, but it kills me to pay someone to fix it when it’s still under warranty.

I hope you are right about people getting redundant computers and internet connections. It drives me nuts, every day I talk to at least 1 person who desperately wants to have their computer fixed, however they can’t stand to be without the computer for even 2 hours while its in for repair. Then I offer to sell them a cheapo spare/redundant computer for a few hundred dollars so they can have that in the mean time, and for the future, but of course they say they can’t justify the expense????

I suspect that problem will also go away some day. Many households have more than one computer. If the home internet goes down, most homes will eventually have a secondary internet connection (e.g. mobile broadband).

Don’t throw it out yet!! Aside from being a domainer I run a Computer Service & Repair + IT Consulting company in San Diego. Online advertising for Computer Repair has proven nearly worthless for this 1 particular industry. Almost everyone calls me from the yellow pages. In fact I am the Biggest ad in my heading (Which wasn’t cheap). Ponder this, the #1 thing that a caller says when we answer the phone is, “I actually called you from the print yellow pages, because my computer is broken and couldn’t look anything up online”! I do feel like computer repair may be the last stand for print advertising though. There are also alot of cases where their computer isn’t broken but their internet is down for whatever reason (Sometimes bad router, Access Point, or ISP Problem).

Anyway, I might want to advertise on these phonebook covers if the price is right, so if you could post the contact information for whoever mailed you that it would probably put more money in my pocket.

In general however you are all correct, print advertising is definitely a thing of the past.