Why does my cursor disappear & reappear on Web Pages and Microsoft Word? How can I fix this annoying problem?

I have an Acer Aspire 9410-2028 Laptop Vista OS and have been experiencing my cursor arrow disappearing and reappearing on web pages and Microsoft Word pages. This has occurred since I’ve had this laptop and it is very annoying. Is there a way to stop this and have it back to the way my XP cursor works on my other computer (you know the kind of cursor you can see all over the place)?