"I want to turn off the touch pad since it gets in the way of typing.
Maybe TouchFreeze is for you:
Annoyed when you are typing a document and accidentally the palm of your hand brushes the touchpad, changing the position of the cursor in your document or accidentally clicking on an option. TouchFreeze is simple utility for Windows NT/2000/XP that solves this problem. It automatically disables touchpad while you are typing text.
TouchFreeze is freeware, works for all Windows versions, x86 & x64"
