Previously in Konqueror when browsing files on my hard drive, I could rename files in place, and they would stay where they were, the view would not shift and I could simply go to the next file to rename it.

I upgraded to 4.3.00, and now whenever I rename a file, the file list gets automatically resorted, and I have to hunt down where I was to rename the next file, which is very annoying.

Is there some config setting somewhere that controls how files are sorted??

Unfortunately it does not appear such an option is available. It is likely that the automatic resorting is done by Qt when the name of the file is updated. The previous behaviour of Konqueror was a bug.

Maybe you want to use a tool like KRename (http://www.krename.net/). It is used for mass renaming but I think you can use it for easy renaming, too.