Cannot configure touchpad on Dell 11Z with Windows 7

I have a new Dell 11Z notebook. It came with Vista Home Premium pre-installed. I was able to configure the Elan touchpad in Vista quite easily (e.g. to get the system to tun off the touchpad when an external mouse was plugged into the USB slot).

 I then installed Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit)  from a CD (clean install - not over Vista) and now I cannot find a way to configure the touchpad anymore. I have talked to two Dell technical asisstants on the 'phone (one took control of my PC to see if he could find a solution) but they had no solution. When I click on the Mouse icon in Control Panel there is nothing there about a touchpad. There is nothing in Device Manager that resembles a touchpad. I have tried temporarily disabling the mouse entries in Device Manager but there is no effect. There is nothing in the BIOS that helps. I cannot find updates for the touchpad driver on the Dell nor the Elan websites. One Dell assistant suggested using a third party program called TouchFreeze to disable the touchpad. But it had no effect.

I really want to turn off the touchpad because I type with my palms on the computer. The arrow goes haywire, deleting and moving text randomly when my palms touch the (very) sensitive touchpad.