Turning off the Touchpad on laptop

Underdog

Hello everyone. As the title suggests, I wanted to find a way to turn off the touchpad for my mom's laptop. She's not the most ergonomic typist and so she tends to graze the touchpad as she's typing and that really seems to bother her. I've figured out how to turn it off manually through the Vaio Control Center but is there a way to set it up so that the touchpad is automatically disabled when a mouse is plugged in but enabled when there isn't a mouse plugged in? The mouse is for when she's using it at home while the touchpad would be reserved for when she has to see a client. I'll try to teach her how to enable and disable the touchpad herself but she tends to forget anything computer related pretty quickly. It's a Sony Vaio if that makes any difference, thanks!

kime

I think this is entirely determined by what the touchpad actually is, as different device drivers allow you to do different things.

It looks like this works if it's a Synaptic touchpad. Would be easier to search knowing what type of touchpad it is, though.

naporeon

I don't know about doing it how you ask, but most laptops I've used have a function key for that. On my last two laptops, it's been Fn + F9.

kime

That's not automatic, though, but it would be worth seeing if there's a shortcut she could use instead of having to navigate the menus