Comment 3 for bug 386980

@ digge
Once again, my pet bug :-(

I did some detective work on the synaptics problem some (a long) time ago
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hal/+bug/351059

But I don't have the skills to go further... So uninstalling the synaptics package really is the best option for now.

if the "synaptics" driver doesn't exist, your mouse / keyboard will be used by "evdev", which is as should be.