I’m running KDE4 in OS 13.2 on an ASUS G73Jh2 17" laptop with Intel Core i7 and Radeon GPU. I use an external USB mouse (Logitech M310) instead of the touchpad. I have the touchpad turned off in the BIOS. I noticed recently that even so, the touchpad is active, and touching it while typing causes cursor repositioning and unexpected clicks. Presumably this has something to do with kcm-touchpad, which replaced synaptiks sometime in the past.
If I add the touchpad widget to my menu bar and invoke it, it says “no touchpad detected” and all of the controls are disabled; but still, the touchpad is working only too well, much to my dismay.
I have no idea how to diagnose this issue. (I would attach the text from YaST’s Hardware Information tool, but there seems to be no option for that.)