When typing on a laptop do you accidentally knock the touchpad, or rest your wrist upon it, leading to some pretty unpredictable results? When glancing back at the screen after typing in a long phrase it can be disheartening to find you might have inadvertently clicked on a different window.

A small utility called Touchfreeze, at version 1.0.2, may help, it describes itself as a “Utility for Windows that disables the touchpad automatically when you are typing text”. Once launched it sits in the Taskbar and monitors for keyboard activity, read to disable and re-enable to track pad.

The utility works with Windows NT/2000/XP and on the whole it works well. There are a few software issues such as Photoshop CS4 and some Windows 7 teething trouble but I have it running on a couple of laptops, for testing purposes, and it does the job.

Touchfreeze is one of those applications that makes you wonder why the functionality wasn’t built in to the operating system already.

Visit the touchfreeze project page for more information and the free download.