Synaptics clickpad: Can't rest finger on button area and move pointer

Question

I have a new laptop with a clickpad touchpad.  I don't like tap to click, so I've disabled that.  I'm trying to get the bottom clickpad area of the touchpad to behave as close to standalone buttons as possible.  On my old laptop I developed a habit of resting my left pointer finger on the left button as my right pointer moved the cursor around.  With this new touchpad, as soon as my finger touches the left button area, the cursor freezes in place ignoring the continued movement of my other finger.
I've tried multiple changes to the synaptics conf but I can't find anything that works.  SoftButtonAreas is set.  It seems like setting AreaBottomEdge should solve the problem, but it doesn't.  The documentation says that setting AreaBottomEdge should "Ignore movements, scrolling and tapping which start below this edge" but touching this area is indeed detected and changes the state of the pad for me even when enabled.
Is this behavior inherent of the driver or is it a quirk related to my specific touchpad?
Does anyone know of a possible solution to remedy this behavior?
xinput -list
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
synclient -l
Parameter settings:
LeftEdge = 131
RightEdge = 3145
TopEdge = 101
BottomEdge = 1771
FingerLow = 1
FingerHigh = 1
MaxTapTime = 180
MaxTapMove = 166
MaxDoubleTapTime = 180
SingleTapTimeout = 180
ClickTime = 100
EmulateMidButtonTime = 0
EmulateTwoFingerMinZ = 282
EmulateTwoFingerMinW = 7
VertScrollDelta = 75
HorizScrollDelta = 75
VertEdgeScroll = 1
HorizEdgeScroll = 0
CornerCoasting = 0
VertTwoFingerScroll = 0
HorizTwoFingerScroll = 0
MinSpeed = 1
MaxSpeed = 1.75
AccelFactor = 0.0530082
TouchpadOff = 0
LockedDrags = 0
LockedDragTimeout = 5000
RTCornerButton = 0
RBCornerButton = 0
LTCornerButton = 0
LBCornerButton = 0
TapButton1 = 0
TapButton2 = 0
TapButton3 = 0
ClickFinger1 = 1
ClickFinger2 = 3
ClickFinger3 = 2
CircularScrolling = 0
CircScrollDelta = 0.1
CircScrollTrigger = 0
CircularPad = 0
PalmDetect = 0
PalmMinWidth = 10
PalmMinZ = 200
CoastingSpeed = 0
CoastingFriction = 50
PressureMotionMinZ = 30
PressureMotionMaxZ = 160
PressureMotionMinFactor = 1
PressureMotionMaxFactor = 1
GrabEventDevice = 0
TapAndDragGesture = 1
AreaLeftEdge = 0
AreaRightEdge = 0
AreaTopEdge = 0
AreaBottomEdge = 1535
HorizHysteresis = 18
VertHysteresis = 18
ClickPad = 1
RightButtonAreaLeft = 1638
RightButtonAreaRight = 0
RightButtonAreaTop = 1535
RightButtonAreaBottom = 0
MiddleButtonAreaLeft = 0
MiddleButtonAreaRight = 0
MiddleButtonAreaTop = 0
MiddleButtonAreaBottom = 0

Answer 1

After further findings, I'll answer my own post:
This behavior is inherent of the driver.  The issue has been known upstream for a little while now:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66532
There is also a bug open on Ubuntu launchpad with quite a bit of discussion:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … ug/1026046
Doesn't appear that any major contributor to the synaptics driver is eager to resolve it
Sadly, I haven't found a good solution to this issue for me.  There is an alternative mtrack driver which isn't prone to this, but it has other quirks that bothered me greatly.  I ended up just forcing myself to get used to tap to click.  I still don't like it.