A quick search found this superuser suggestion to install the Synaptics touchpad driver from the Ubuntu repository. Searching in the package manager turned up libsynaptics and gsynaptics so I installed them both.

Before this would work, I needed to create a file according to the instructions found Kogan Agora Netbook blog:

sudo vim /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi

Once opened, it needed to have the following as its contents:

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
      <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">True</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

I have no idea of that version number is correct, but this allowed me to move on. Additionally, in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, I added the section (via sudo vim):

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad"
        Driver          "synaptics"
        Option          "SHMConfig"             "true"
EndSection

after rebooting (or logging out, or restarting X), you can then run gsynaptics from gmrun or the terminal. Even better, assign a new entry to the OpenBox menu to execute gsynaptics from a System menu item labeled Touchpad. Once you have that, you can decrease the sensitivity of the touchpad, add and tweak acceleration values and modify tapping behavior. It works really well and has radically reduced the number of accidental mouse actions. This tweak alone has made the Crunchbang netbook experience much much better.

Dell Mini 10 with Ubuntu – touchpad issues – Super User.