Cursor Jumps All Over Screen - Windows 7 Almost Unusable

I noticed something similar happening in my previous laptop using Vista, but in Windows 7 it's almost unusable. As I'm typing the cursor will change positions either on the application (to another area of same application), or will jump to another document. At times I'll start to highlight something in Word to delete it, and as I hit "delete" the cursor switches to another part of the document, highlighting another paragraph and deleting it instead of what I was trying to delete.

At other times I see the cursor leave the document, go to one of the icons of another application at the bottom of the screen. Just as I hit "return" the cursor is now in another document and that document comes up on the screen instead of the one I was using. At first I was losing whole documents. But then I got smart enough to realize that they had been closed, or stuck somewhere, and I eventually could find them instead of losing all of the work I had done.

I've been composing emails and suddenly the email disappears. It was sent before I finished composing it. This happens about one every minute or so, and sometimes even more often. I can see the hourglass pop up on the screne as I move the mouse. When it pops up either the screen zoom changes, screen size changes, or jumps off to one of the other icons as I mentioned above. It looks to me as if the operating system is doing something else at those times, and if I'm going very fast (I type at about 100 wpm and up) that keystrokes get stuck somewhere I didn't intend for them to be.

I make that assumption because when I move the mouse fast and see the hourglass pop up that's when it happens with the mouse, so I'm assuming that it happens with keystrokes as well. But that's a guess. I also notice that if my finger drags across the mousepad on the laptop that sometimes that can cause this erratic behavior. Or if as I move the mouse instead of being in the center of the sensor pad I'm at the edge, that can create some real weird results.