A lot of these touchpads or their drivers are made by a company called 
Synaptics.  Their app may be in the system tray/notification area.  If not, 
it might be on the Start menu.  One version I have seen had a tabbed dialog 
box, and it didn't take long to find an option to disable the touchpad.  I'm 
happy that my Toshiba laptop has a little button for enabling and disabling 
the touchpad.

-----Original Message----- 
From: Tom Behler
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2012 4:08 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Off topic: Disabling touchpad mouse on Dell Lattitude D600 Laptop

Hi, everyone.

Regarding the Windows XP laptop I'm about to acquire for use in the ham
shack, does anyone know what steps are needed to disable the touchpad mouse?

As we all know, disabling the mouse is helpful, since it prevents us from
accidentally winding up in no man's land when in the middle of computer
work, like contest logging for example.

Tom Behler: KB8TYJ