If you have a laptop with touchpad, then you know how many times the cursor jumps around the screen when you are typing. This happens because you accidentally touch the touchpad with your wrists, arms or palm of your hand. Usual solution provided for this problem is to decrease the sensitivity of your touchpad from the Control Panel, but some users still experience the bouncy cursor. If you too are annoyed with this problem, then you can try free TouchFreeze software which prevents accidental mouse clicks and cursor jumps.
TouchFreeze is an open source application that blocks mouse events when you are typing on your keyboard. Usually your arms, wrists or palms brush with the touchpad when you are typing. By blocking touchpad when you are typing, TouchFreeze solves the problem of accidental touches. You can download TouchFreeze from its Google Code project site. The download is available as an MSI installer package which is around 268 kilobytes in size.
After the installation, TouchFreeze would place an icon in the notification area of Windows indicating that it is running and blocking accidental touches. By right-clicking on the notification area icon, you can access option to run TouchFreeze automatically on Windows startup. There are no other options available.
There is no option to just disable the TouchFreeze application. If you want to stop TouchFreeze for few moments, then you can right-click on its notification area icon and select Exit. While running in the background, it disables touchpad for a few seconds as you start to type. When you stop typing, the touchpad is enabled again after few moments.
You can download TouchFreeze from http://code.google.com/p/touchfreeze/.
My problem is that I have a mouse IN ADDITION to the touchpad. Both move the screen cursor. I would prefer not to use the touchpad at all except in emergencies when the mouse is not working. Microsoft removed the convenient option of disabling the touchpad when a mouse is connected.
While this solution comes close, it still will not work in situations when I am editting and need to move the cursor quickly.
I am going to try a less technical approach and just tape over the touchpad using removeable tape.