Laptop touchpad scratched

[1nvest]

Elderly laptop recently has some of the touchpad starting to flake off, which after a cleansing with some fairy liquid has left a bare patch that feels rough to the touch. Reading around and a inexpensive vinyl sticker can be overlaid to restore a smooth feel. New idea for me, thinking it would kill the sensitivity/usability, however after trying a clear panel (address area) peeled from a envelope as a overlay and it seemed to work ok. So my next thought is to just buy a mobile phone screen protector vinyl and shape/apply that to the touchpad.

Has anyone used such a fix? How successful or not is that? It is best to remove (scrape off) all of the existing cover before application, or as seems OK just stick it on top of the existing touchpad having cleaned off just the weak/flaky patches?

[Urbandreamer]

It might help to give the make of the laptop.

For example it's not unknown for hackers to replace keyboards or touchpads with ones that they prefer on some laptops. Even motherboards!

ie Thinkpad X220's or X230's have keyboards swapped. X240's and X250's have had their touchpads replaced.
X220's have had their motherboards replaced with something a lot more recent as have very old Thinkpads.

Ie the X2100, which replaces the motherboard of a early Thinkpad but keeps the case, keybard, thinkpad nipple etc to give modern performance.

No use of course if your laptop is a HP etc.

So give us a clue.

[1nvest]

Acer Aspire ES15. Used as a terminal (Unix/BSD laptop device that connects to our home server). Basically just boots NetBSD base + tigervnc installed on top, and connects to a x0vncserver session running on the server that otherwise is headless but is connected to the TV/sound system). So quite a bit of touchpad usage. Part of which includes using it as a remote to control the Virgin Media box (channel changing etc. via telnet commands).

Quite a cheap, but otherwise physically solid/sound device. I don't think the design is very accommodating to swapping things out such as the touchpad.

[Infrasonic]

Couldn't you use an external USB or BT keyboard/touchpad - Logitech seem to be the go to option - assuming there are no BSD driver issues (have a look on the BSD forums).

[servodude]

I'd say you'd be fine just putting it on.

They're capacitive touch sensors in essence with your finger as one node so you're looking to create a homogeneous substrate

Thicker vinyl will make the discrepancies on the original pad less noticeable (minimising the changes across the surface)
- if you tried to scrape it all off you'd probably end up with a budgie under the wallpaper scenario - which is mitigated by thicker wallpaper
It would likely be air gaps that caused problems (through insulation) rather than another layer of "something"

[PhaseThree]

I have swapped my Dell touch pad twice now ( crap build quality). A fairly easy proceedure if you take your time.
If you are lucky your machine may be similar. Search YouTube for instructions and ebay for parts.