Notebook users can be divided into two categories: those who prefer the mouse and those who prefer the touchpad. Those who belong to the second group can immediately close this article - it is not for them. But mouse lovers should read it carefully. Surely more than once or twice everyone had to deal with an insignificant but annoying problem - when using a mouse, there is always a chance to accidentally touch the touchpad and ruin something. Therefore, today we will talk about how to disable the touchpad on laptops. There are many ways, from the simplest to those that you need to think about. But first, a little digression into history.
Touchpad Facts
The touchpad was invented by George Gerfeide back in 1988. However, his device gained popularity only six years later. Apple's Powerbooks were the first touchpad laptops. It's worth remembering that Apple laptops refer to them as trackpads, not touchpads.
Touchpads are no differentvariety of shapes: they are either rectangular or round. This device, of course, is very convenient, but in some cases it cannot be used. For example, when working professionally with graphic editors.
And now let's move on to the question of how to set up a laptop so that the touchpad does not interfere with its easy use.
Elementary ways
For starters, the simplest. Something that does not require any special effort. Find an old plastic card, even a bank one, even a discount one - it doesn't matter, and close the touch panel with it. For reliability, seal the whole thing with tape.
If the laptop is used only for working with text, then you need to do the following. Place the cursor on the text, and move the mouse to the lower right corner. Voila - the risk of spoiling something is reduced to 40%.
Lucky people should carefully examine their touchpad on a laptop. It is possible to find a small button in the corner of the panel. This button is responsible for the operation of the sensor. On different laptops, the design is different. Somewhere it's just a square, and somewhere a handle touching the touchpad. Pressing the button disables the touchpad.
Easy Ways
At this point it is worth considering how to disable the touchpad on laptops in a more reliable way. You can make the touchpad automatically turn off when you connect a mouse to your laptop. To do this, go to the "Control Panel", find the label "Mouse" there. Find "Device Settings" and put the sliderto the "Disable" position in the "Enable/Disable Touchpad" section. Deed done.
In addition, there is an opportunity to simplify your task. Among the keys F1-F12 there is one that is responsible for disabling the touchpad. Most likely, it will have a drawing of a crossed out panel and an uncrossed out mouse. The Fn key is easy to find. Pressing these two buttons at the same time will cause the touchpad to stop working. Pressing the combination again will turn on the touchpad.
Complex ways
These methods, perhaps, are not so much difficult to perform as they take a lot of time. The quickest of these is using software whose function is to make the touchpad on a laptop stop working. First of all, you should find out which brand of touchpad you have installed. If Synaptics, then you can download the program Synaptics Pointing Device Driver. With this application, you can not only completely disable the touchpad, but also change its sensitivity. For everyone except WINDOWS 7 users, the Touchfreeze utility is available, which will freeze the touchpad response while typing.
If all this is too small, then you can solve the issue of how to disable the touchpad on laptops, in a very radical way, which consists in changing the BIOS settings. In the Internal Pointing Device section, you will need to select the appropriate value for the touchpad. You can also try to disassemble the laptop and disconnect the cable connected to the touchpad.
Here are the main ways todisable the touchpad on laptops. One of them will definitely suit you. Even if you do not know the features of your laptop and are not ready to take it apart, you can easily disable the touchpad without spending unnecessary nerves on this process. These methods will be useful for users of not only laptops, but also netbooks. There is no fundamental difference in disabling the touchpad on these devices.
Magic Trackpad
We have already said that Apple uses a special author's device as a touch panel. As a dessert, let's talk about it in more detail. The development is called Magic Trackpad, and it provides support for Multi-Touch technology. The device was first introduced in July 2010. This trackpad is similar to that found on the MacBook Pro or MacBook Air.
The trackpad is fully compatible with Mac OS X from version 10.6.4. In addition, it can work in the environment of current Windows systems if they are run on Apple computers using BootCamp, if you add the driver for this device. The above locks work for this device as well.
