The laptop has a trackpad and a trackpoint (one of those nipple-mouse things). I think the GlidePoint mentioned above is the latter. Not sure what the other two are. (There's no mouse plugged in right now.)
Note that gsynaptics (I think I installed it by hand) has a "disable" option that works only on the trackpad (the nipple keeps working), it can enable tapping (and change tapping speed), and can enable/disable vertical scrolling on the trackpad's edge. So it can do some detection. However, the sensitivity setting does nothing whatsoever.
(Note that I think it's preferable that the sensitivity settings for a mouse/trackpad/trackpoint be separated. So the mouse settings applet shouldn't do anything with the trackpad unless it presents it as a separate option.)
The sensitivity setting in the mouse applet doesn't affect the trackpoint, either. However, the acceleration setting affects _all_ of them (mouse, trackpad, trackpoint). So it's impossible to balance them out.
On a Dell Latitude D620 I get:
$ cat /proc/bus/ input/devices devices/ virtual/ input/input0
I: Bus=0017 Vendor=0001 Product=0001 Version=0100
N: Name="Macintosh mouse button emulation"
P: Phys=
S: Sysfs=/
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse0 event0
B: EV=7
B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=3
[snipped keyboard/power buttons/lid switch]
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0008 Version=0000 serio1/ input1 devices/ virtual/ input/input10
N: Name="PS/2 Mouse"
P: Phys=isa0060/
S: Sysfs=/
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse1 event2
B: EV=7
B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=3
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0008 Version=6337 serio1/ input0 devices/ platform/ i8042/serio1/ input/input11
N: Name="AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint"
P: Phys=isa0060/
S: Sysfs=/
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse2 event3
B: EV=f
B: KEY=420 0 70000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=3
B: ABS=1000003
The laptop has a trackpad and a trackpoint (one of those nipple-mouse things). I think the GlidePoint mentioned above is the latter. Not sure what the other two are. (There's no mouse plugged in right now.)
Note that gsynaptics (I think I installed it by hand) has a "disable" option that works only on the trackpad (the nipple keeps working), it can enable tapping (and change tapping speed), and can enable/disable vertical scrolling on the trackpad's edge. So it can do some detection. However, the sensitivity setting does nothing whatsoever.
(Note that I think it's preferable that the sensitivity settings for a mouse/trackpad/ trackpoint be separated. So the mouse settings applet shouldn't do anything with the trackpad unless it presents it as a separate option.)
The sensitivity setting in the mouse applet doesn't affect the trackpoint, either. However, the acceleration setting affects _all_ of them (mouse, trackpad, trackpoint). So it's impossible to balance them out.