slow touchpad in (K)Ubuntu 8.10 Latitude D830

My wife has a new work laptop. Install of Kubuntu Intrepid Ibex went fine, but vpnc did not work. Well, a bug entry in lauchpad solved that: 280926

Next, the touchpad was much too insensitive, and editing xorg.conf is no longer wanted with Xorg 7.3+ Fortunately another launchpad bug brought the solution: 177146

So now I have a file touchpadsens in my ~/.kde/Autostart directory with the contents:

#!/bin/bash
xinput set-ptr-feedback "AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint" 3 8 1

After that, the file touchpadsens is made executable:

chmod +x touchpadsens

and now, all looks fine... well till the next issue! I did not put dvd's or cd's in the drive, ....