I just installed Open Suse12.3 and am trying to disable my touchpad and have not been able to find anything that will do it, tried most everything found on Web but nothing does the trick. Synaptics does not have a feature to disable touchpad? any help appriciated. I am using a Toshiba Satellite P855-S5200 Laptop.
To turn off touch pad:
Type:
synclient TouchpadOff=1
To turn it back on:
Type:
synclient TouchpadOff=0
Thank you, it works. 
Is there a way to turn it off full time so that you don’t have to type the info each time you restart the laptop?
What’s the desktop environment you’re using?
For KDE: install and use “synaptiks”
For GNOME: install and use “gsynaptics”