Power Management Question for XPS 1330M Laptop

[AWDriver]

I have two power questions regarding mint on my notebook, I'd appreciate whatever help that can be offered. I also have a miscellaneous question as well.

First, using the FN+Up/Down Arrow adjusts the backlight intensity, but it adjusts it in leaps so it's only about three steps (lowest, middle, highest). With the screen brightness panel app I can adjust it to a much finer gradient, is there a way to the steps taken using the FN+Arrow keys?

Second, in power management the lowest I can set computer or screen sleep is 11 minutes. The slider can't go left any more. Can I set these lower since I usually do 5 min on screen on battery to extend battery life?

For the third miscellaneous question, is there a way to have the touchpad temporarily deactivate when typing? It's synaptics. This is without disabling tap click, I like the feature and hope there is a "suspend tap while typing" setting like in windows.

This is all using the live CD to evaluate whether I want to install it onto the HD and clear up space for a partition. These are really the only hookups so far, I'm surprised it got the media keys and everything.

Thanks!

[hotweiss]

What version of Mint are you using, 4 or 5?

1) Open /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and add this line: blacklist video

2) I don't think you can make the screen blank after 5 minutes.

3) Here a solution: http://hattory.blogspot.com/2008/03/dis ... yping.html

[AWDriver]

I found a way to lower screen/suspend below 11minutes. Not very intuitive, might be worth considering for the developers to move this option. Was clued in on the solution from Ubuntu forums, got the remaining 40% myself.

This is on my desktop, but it'll work on the laptop as well (waiting until final release to install there since that's for school).
Under screensaver, you need to reduce the "regard computer as idle after" figure. It is defaulted to 10. This is why in power management everything bottoms out at 11. I just set it to 3 (you could even choose 1) and unchecked "activate screensaver when computer is idle."

Now you can lower power management sliders to whatever you want. I'll set it to 1 on my laptop so I can have a 3 or 5 min screen powerdown to save juice.

No terminal hacking necessary, I pride myself on being a Linux n00b and trying to refuse to use terminal unless I'm stuck