Comment 22 for bug 341094

I applied the Menu.lst options for the i8042 and that also seems to have fixed it for me.

PS I forgot to mention that I also have a Dell Vostro 1510.

From my early days in Micros in the 70s/80s I remember that the Intel 8042 was the original keyboard controller in the early IBM PCs, now presumably embedded or emulated in modern MB chipsets.
Intrigued I found this site
      http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
which lists the following i8042 parameters

        i8042.debug [HW] Toggle i8042 debug mode
 i8042.direct [HW] Put keyboard port into non-translated mode
 i8042.dumbkbd [HW] Pretend that controller can only read data from
        keyboard and cannot control its state
        (Don't attempt to blink the leds)
 i8042.noaux [HW] Don't check for auxiliary (== mouse) port
 i8042.nokbd [HW] Don't check/create keyboard port
 i8042.noloop [HW] Disable the AUX Loopback command while probing
        for the AUX port
 i8042.nomux [HW] Don't check presence of an active multiplexing
        controller
 i8042.nopnp [HW] Don't use ACPIPnP / PnPBIOS to discover KBD/AUX
        controllers
 i8042.panicblink=
   [HW] Frequency with which keyboard LEDs should blink
        when kernel panics (default is 0.5 sec)
 i8042.reset [HW] Reset the controller during init and cleanup
 i8042.unlock [HW] Unlock (ignore) the keylock