Turning off the touchpad on a laptop computer

Some people like to use an external mouse on their laptop rather than having to deal with the touchpad or that little blue circle on the keyboard to move the cursor around the screen.  On a Dell laptop, you can hit the Function key and then F7 to stop the touchpad from working while you have an external mouse connected. 

You can get to your touchpad settings by going into your Control Panel and then go to Mouse.  It might also be on the bottom right of your screen on your taskbar.  After you click the Mouse option in the Control Panel, click on the touchpad picture to get to the options screen for the touchpad. 

For a Dell touchpad,

You can enable or disable the pointing stick (the blue thing on the keyboard) or the buttons for it.  You can also enable or disable the touchpad and the buttons for it.  If you want the touchpad to not work at all while you have an external mouse attached, click on the option that says "Disable TouchPad / Pointing Stick when external USB mouse is present".

Your options may be different depending on what brand of laptop that you own.  You may not even have a pointing stick (the blue circle on the keyboard).  I hope that this tip is helpful and have fun!