~500 wakeups/sec with xorg-input-synaptics

[Will Rouesnel]

I've been noticing lately that my laptop is (Dell L501x) is producing a
truly staggering number of wakeups when I use the touchpad - ~500 or so
per second when the touchpad is moved.

I'm using the 1.6.2-1 version of the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics in
Linux Mint (Ubuntu). Is there a known cause of this (or a patch for it?)
- this seems like an unreasonably high amount of wake ups even for an
input device like a touchpad, and seems to be by far the biggest single
cause of them on my system when on battery power.