My typing is dancing all over the place, and I'm guessing it has to do with the touchpad (which I never use) ... how can I disable it?

the touchpad can be disabled in the bios.

Aalternatively type up your messages in an email as these are saved instantly as a draft after one stops typing for a moment.

Place a piece of thick card over the touchpad. This problem is frequently caused by a stray palm or thumb touching the touchpad whilst typing.

Make sure you disable or turn off the touchpad when you are typing. You are accidentally hitting the touchpad when typin that causes your cursor to be erratic. I suggest to plug in a mouse and disable the touchpad.

Try the suggestions in this link.
Disabling the touchpad on my Latitude E6410

Disabling the touchpad on a Dell Inspiron can be useful when typing for long periods of time, or using an external mouse. Bumping or tapping the touchpad while typing can cause cursor jumping and unwanted results. Use the touchpad software to enable or disable touchpad controls. Download the driver for your touchpad at the Dell Support website.

Click on the "Touchpad" icon in the task bar. If the icon doesn't appear, you can download and install the driver for the touchpad from the Dell website, or choose "Start" and "Control Panel." Choose "Device Select" on the touchpad menu, or choose "Mouse" in the "Control Panel" menu and "Device Select." Click "Disable" under "Touchpad" to turn off the touchpad, or click "Disable Touchpad/Pointing Stick When a USB Mouse is Connected."
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http://www.fixya.com/support/r5283576-dell_latitude_portable_2008_or_newer touch-check, palmCheck or other settings in the touchpad settings will disable the touchpad while typing, and it will become active when you stop typing

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It is a common annoyances with netbooks and laptops which lack the disable touchpad button. Most blogs out there are covering a single method to disable the touchpad, i.e, go to Control Panel > Mouse Properties and then disable the touchpad from there.

The above method is not suitable for those who need to disable the touchpad frequently for short periods of time. Who in his/her right mind would navigate back and forth just to enable/disable touchpad? This could be quite a hectic process.
TouchFreeze is a brilliant little app that solves this problem. It disables the touchpad temporarily the moment a keystroke is pressed. In layman's term, it disables the touchpad automatically when you are typing and enables it back when the typing is stopped.
It will sit silently in the system tray without disturbing any of your work. Just start typing and don't worry about the touchpad any more.
I prefer using this app even though my notebook has a disable touchpad button. Please note that this app might not work with certain laptops, but should work with most netbooks and laptops that lack the disable touchpad button.
Download TouchFreeze
http://code.google.com/p/touchfreeze/

this happens often .. try to go to Website of Manufacturer and down load latest driver for the touchpad then watch where it downloads to, click on the installl file this will have you reboot after install \
fixed a few like this OR some have disabled touchpad added a new infra red mouse and that stopped the creepy mouse curser syndrome :)

Someone has remote assistance to your computer. Go into Control panal and turn "Remote Assistance" off

Hi,
Go onto control panel and click on Mouse, then Device Settings and highlight the touchpad from the list and click Disable.

Fixya!

Chris (ziraffa)