Proper way to configure input devices

[Christian Schuerer <debian.lists@quincunx.at>]

Hello,

since I've purchased a new keyboard + mouse (wireless, from BenQ) I ask myself 
which is the right way to set up input devices for X.org 7 and KDE (3.5.4, 
Debian sid).

I'm using a laptop computer with a synaptics touchpad. Sometimes I've just the 
built-in keyboard and touchpad, and sometimes I connect my external devices, 
so I need a setup which works for all cases.

My current X.org setup looks like this (just the relevant parts):

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Generic Keyboard"
        Driver          "kbd"
        Option          "CoreKeyboard"
        Option          "XkbRules"      "xorg"
        Option          "XkbModel"      "pc105"
        Option          "XkbLayout"     "de"
        Option          "XkbVariant"    "nodeadkeys"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "USB Mouse"
        Driver          "mouse"
        Option          "SendCoreEvents"        "true"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/input/mice"
        Option          "Protocol"              "ExplorerPS/2"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad"
        Driver          "synaptics"
        Option          "SendCoreEvents"        "true"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/psaux"
        Option          "Protocol"              "auto-dev"
        Option          "HorizScrollDelta"      "0"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier      "Default Layout"
        Screen          "Default Screen"
        InputDevice     "Generic Keyboard"
        InputDevice     "Synaptics Touchpad"
        InputDevice     "USB Mouse"
EndSection

As you can see, I'm obviously still using the old X-style (and driver) for the 
USB mouse. Some howtos say that the new driver in X.org would be evdev, which 
I couldn't get to work. For evdev, you have to configure the device directly, 
like /dev/input/event2 - but what happens if I plug in another mouse - which 
propably will have /dev/input/event3? Is there something like /dev/input/mice 
for use with evdev? Anyway, is evdev the recommended way now?

Another problem is the speed of the mouse: the new one has a resolution of 
800dpi, which obviously makes the mouse faster. Even little movements result 
in a jumping, fast moving pointer on the screen. This makes selecting of e.g. 
small icons on my desktop quite hard, as it got more difficult to controll 
the movement of the mouse. I tried to set the acceleration-setting for the 
mouse pointer in the KDE control centre, but this doesn't show any effect 
(even after restarting KDE). I read a suggestion to configure the mouse via 
xset (e.g. xset m 5 10), but this doesn't show any effect either. Does anyone 
know why the mouse-settings don't show any effect? What am I missing? It 
would be great to apply settings for individual mice as I use differend 
models of mice at different places (as I'm moving around with my laptop 
computer from site to site).

Hope I did explain my issues regarding input devices on my laptop computer 
clearly. Thanks for any advice in advance!

Kind regards,

   Christian

PS: I'm crossposting this to the debian-kde list as I'm unable to configure 
the mouse via KDE.