Forget qsynaptics and everything else, too
The qsynaptics "fix" for my Alps touchpad and mouse speed would only work if qsynaptics was run -- WITH boxes being clicked -- after every login.
So I decided to REALLY slow down the mouse and remove the "alps" configuration line from the Synaptics portion of xorg.conf.
Holy hell -- that "fix" has been screwing me up all along. I don't have time to really play with it right now, but it looks like the standard Debian configuration ... in Lenny anyway ... is better than anything else I had with all that tweaking.
I'd still like to turn off the tap-to-click function, and I suspect that's a feature of the GNOME desktop in Ubuntu Gutsy, not of Ubuntu itself. And that supposed newer version of GNOME might (or might not) come to Lenny. I'll take a look at some point to see if what I'm spouting here is true ... it's just a suspicion at this point.
All this does is make Debian (and Ubuntu, too) look better ...