Panning on Intel

[Pete Catania]

Hi,

Ive googled this to death and believe I am up against a brick wall but
as a last resort only im asking if anyone here can help... sorry if I
missed something.

I have a new laptop, an X60, which I am trying to transfer over to from
my old X31. The old laptop (which I try not to reboot, just hibernate
usually) is used with a 1920x1200 monitor at work and home, but on the
road, the internal display shows a 1024x768 window into the main screen,
I believe this is called a virtual desktop but my terminology might be
wrong there. I found a way to make it boot into this mode and stay
there.

To be clear, the laptop always stays in 1920x1200 mode and the internal
display always shows a 1024x768 window view into this 1920x1200 desktop,
and pans around internally in the desktop with the mouse cursor. When I
disconnect the external monitor I am still able to work, albeit with the
need to pan around my desktop, but its effective still.

On the new laptop with the new Ubuntu on it, this is no longer working.
The new laptop has a intel chipset.

Research seems to show that this is because the developers removed this
functionality from the driver but that there might be a replacement in
the pipeline, in xrandr 1.3, but this seems to not be out yet. However I
am confused as to what the options are - alternative drivers possibly,
downgrading to a previous version, etc. I am a pretty average linux
user, no whizz, although ive been using it for some years, X
configuration has always been my most dreaded task when upgrading and
here I am again, stuck.

I would just like to know if anyone knows a way to make this work again.
I dont seem to be able to safely switch (ctrl plus etc) between
resolutions without strange things happening to one application or
another so the previously mentioned method which I used was very
effective and stable. But I am now stuck and I think ill have to get rid
of this lovely new laptop if I cant fix this problem :-(

I would ideally like to have the X60 stay in 1920x1200 mode, with the
internal display always activated and always in 1024x768 mode, viewing a
window onto the 1920x1200 desktop. Then if I plug in an external monitor
it will come on with no software switching etc - just make the laptop
stay in that mode permanently.

All I have managed to do (as described by other posters on this site) is
make the internal display stay viewing a certain part of the desktop
unable to pan to a different part. 

I have seen the replies to others, but I am wondering if anything has
changed, or if theres any possible method at all to get panning back. I
dont need any fancy functionality - just this. I wonder if theres a more
basic driver for instance? Previous version that would be compatible
with the other software already installed by Ubuntu? The idea of
compiling all of X scares me. Any possible solutions at all?

If anyone can spare the time to help I would really appreciate it.

Thanks, Pete