Main symptoms:
The touchpad itself is working (moving the cursor), tap and drag working Ok.
The scroll is a rocker switch: up for scroll up and down for scroll down, situated between the left and right mouse buttons.
The down action acts like the middle mouse button (even though this model laptop does not have middle mouse button fuctionality)
The up action does nothing.
In the mouse settings I see a "Virtual core XTEST pointer" and "PS/2 Generic Mouse" - Nothing about any touchpad.

Problem:
Therefore the specific problem is that the rocker switch does not scroll up and down, instead the down actions is acting as a middle mouse button.

Root cause:
[guess] I think that the touchpad (which I believe is an alps device) is not being correctly recognised at the hardware level.

Further info:
I installed xubuntu alongside the existing Windows XP installation. I checked in Windows and the device is called "Alps Pointing-device". It's Plug and Play hardware ID is "ACPI\PNP0F13\4&32D50C2&0"

If I do 'cat /proc/bus/input/devices' I get:

I: Bus=0019 Vendor=0000 Product=0001 Version=0000
N: Name="Power Button"
P: Phys=PNP0C0C/button/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0C0C:00/input/input0
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event0
B: EV=3
B: KEY=100000 0 0 0

I: Bus=0019 Vendor=0000 Product=0005 Version=0000
N: Name="Lid Switch"
P: Phys=PNP0C0D/button/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0C0D:00/input/input1
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=event1
B: EV=21
B: SW=1

I: Bus=0019 Vendor=0000 Product=0001 Version=0000
N: Name="Power Button"
P: Phys=LNXPWRBN/button/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXPWRBN:00/input/input2
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event2
B: EV=3
B: KEY=100000 0 0 0

I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0001 Product=0001 Version=ab54
N: Name="AT Translated Set 2 keyboard"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio0/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input3
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=sysrq kbd event3
B: EV=120013
B: KEY=4 2000000 3803078 f800d001 feffffdf ffefffff ffffffff fffffffe
B: MSC=10
B: LED=7

I: Bus=0019 Vendor=0000 Product=0006 Version=0000
N: Name="Video Bus"
P: Phys=LNXVIDEO/video/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0A03:00/LNXVIDEO:00/input/input4
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event4
B: EV=3
B: KEY=3e000b 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

I: Bus=0019 Vendor=0000 Product=0006 Version=0000
N: Name="Fujitsu FUJ02B1"
P: Phys=FUJ02B1/video/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0A03:00/device:04/FUJ02B1:00/input/input5
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event5
B: EV=3
B: KEY=10003 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0001 Version=0000
N: Name="PS/2 Generic Mouse"     ############
P: Phys=isa0060/serio4/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio4/input/input6
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse0 event6
B: EV=7
B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=3