[omgbear]

I'd love my trackpad and mouse be separate -- It'd be nice to have the trackpad maybe constrained to the laptop screen and the mouse cover both the built-in and external one.

Maybe possible with XINERAMA and assigning a mouse to a separate screen? IIRC you could have two separate X sessions on one machine with separate mice/keyboard -- Never tried to have 2 cursors in one screen.

[dfex]

I use a Trackpad (left hand) and a mouse (right hand) all the time. I find moving through documents with the trackpad (two-finger scroll) and switching workspaces (three-finger swipe) much more natural on the track pad, but use the scroll-wheel on the mouse for things like zooming (I do a lot of work in Visio and AutoCAD).