A lot of friends asked me what sort of laptop to buy that was cheap and reliable and I suggested the Toshiba Satellite range: Satellite Laptop - Toshiba

I found the one my wife has fantastic, I think it's close to 3 years old now and still going strong. However there's been one major concern about the Toshiba range and that's after doing the Microsoft updates the mousepad, touchpad stops all together or stops allowing the right side of the touch pad to scroll pages.

The reason for this is the Synaptics update that is downloadable when doing regular Microsoft updates. It overrides the Alps touchpad drivers and causes conflict.

The way to get around this in Vista is go to start > Control Panel > Uninstall Programs

then find the Synaptics driver and uninstall it, you will need to restart the maching after that. If the problem hasn't been fixed you will need to install the Alps drivers again.

To get the drivers go to here: Laptop Driver Downloads:

enter in your laptop model details, usually found on the underside of the notebook. The driver will be listed under Touch Pad Driver the one that has worked for my wife's machine and all my friends is:

07/05/08 Touch Pad Driver Alps Electric Windows Vista 32 Bit 7.0.301.4 World Wide

hope that helps.
Gav.