Touchpad on 3522 or M210

I've been lurking the forums for a while and finally purchased the Gateway 3522 (BB retail M210). I've only had it for a couple days and I'm experiencing problems which I read about somewhere before I even bought the lappy.

There is a Synaptics touchpad driver which I updated from their website. The vertical scroll works fine in IE, but not in Firefox. This worked the same way prior to updating the touchpad driver.

Also, I read alot of people have problems with Synaptics drivers and use of a wireless mouse, conflicts with drivers. One person went to driverguide.com and downloaded and old Synaptics driver which fixed his prob.

I went to the site, but which driver would I get, a basic Synaptics touchpad driver, or ps/2 port touchpad driver?

Can I install, say Alps touchpad drivers, or am I limited to Synaptics? Or does someone know another fix, ie: mayber using a touchpad driver for another Gateway model?

Thanks for the help.

////////////////////////////////////Update/////////////////////////////////////////
I installed Alps touchpad drivers, seems to work find, and I can scroll, if it gets froggy, I'll just go back to Synaptics.

Is there any tweak or setting for turning off the touchpad when an external mouse is NOT connected?