Comment 19 for bug 614176

I also have the invisible cursor problem, but a recent PPA kernel by Brian Rogers includes a fix. For those having an invisible cursor at boot, you may wish to briefly test that kernel to see if it fixes the problem for you. Please be aware that the kernel is primarily intended to fix Bug 541511, so if you're not suffering other i855 problems then you will probably want to avoid the test kernel.

The PPA is located here:
https://launchpad.net/~brian-rogers/+archive/graphics-fixes

You should also read through the i855 master bug (above) because it details other fixes that are/are not working for people with a wide variety of i855 machines.