The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

Laptop usability

Why the @#$@#$$@#&^%*^%@(sorry, cant be polite) do they put the windows shortcut key and start key on the top right hand side of the keyboard in laptops?.

I find myself searching for the key always. They can squeeze it in the left side, like always

Karthik
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

Or better, why do they put the insert key to the right of the spacebar, I am always bumping it and losing typed text.

Aussie Chick
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

I just checked and both my HP and Sharp laptops have them where they belong. Must be your band/model.

On PC laptops I hate it when they put the fn key in the lower right-most corner, moving the ctrl key over. Some companies are smart and put the ctrl where it belongs and the fn key next to it.

--Josh

JWA
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

My laptop has the windows key on the left, the context menu key on the right, and the insert button on the top row over the backspace key. I'm used to it; other keyboards (especially thinkpads) drive me insane.

All laptop keyboards suck.

Chris Tavares
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

About the only flaw with the Mac laptop keyboards is the slightly inconvenient placement of the fn and ctrl keys. The fn key is left-most followed by ctrl. Given the number of times I've found myself hitting fn-C rather than Ctrl-C to interrupt a shell process, I think the should be reversed.

Jeff Watkins
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

My Dell Inspiron keyboard's lower row is fairly standard: <Ctrl> <Fn> <Windows> <Alt> <___Spacebar___> <Alt> <Ctrl>

The context menu key is in the upper-right hand of the keyboard, next to <Prnt Scrn>. (Strange place, but I never use it anyways.)

Keyboard layout was important to me when I was shopping for notebooks. My two big pet peeves are:

1. Squeezing extra keys into the lower Spacebar row. Some keyboards suqeeze as many as five, or evey six, keys to the left of the spacebar, which turns it into more like a "space key."

2. Arrow keys that are arranged horizontally, instead of the God-ordained "inverted T" layout.

Robert Jacobson
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

Robert Jacobson
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

Aussie Chick - do you actually ever use the insert key? If not, just pop the key off the keyboard. Someone suggested this to me ages ago and I've never accidentally hit caps lock or insert since.

r1ch
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

It hard to believe, although the primary reason is lack of real estate, the real reason is due to keyboard layout and design copyrights. Another reason? Stupidity! Let's not rule that out.

Li-fan Chen
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

A very nice tool to solve most laptop keyboard layout problems..

http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/

Enjoy

I remapped my right-alt key as the "windows context" menu key on my dell 8600..

enjoy

Heston T. Holtmann, B.Sc.Eng
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

What really puzzles me is all the new 17" widescreen laptops that've come out -- with the usual cramped keyboard swimming in the middle of acres of available real estate. The HP zd7000 series is the only one I've seen that gets it right, using the available extra space to add in a full numeric keypad.

Martha
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

Windows XP, and possibly others, has an option in the Accessibility settings that allows you to set the computer to make a specific beep when ever you hit the Caps Lock, Num Lock, or Insert keys. I *always* set this up as one of the first things I do on a new computer.

Check it out, you'll love it.

--Josh

JWA
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

Copyrights for layouts? Are you sure? I would think the best that could be done would be a design patent, which doesn't last too long I don't think; would be surprised if any good layout were still under patent.

Dominatrix
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

----"Check it out, you'll love it."----

But always check out any food or dirinks your office mates give you on the office mouser first just in case it's poisoned. I accidentally hit caps lock a lot, and I can feel the eyes boring right through my back directly after the beep!

Stephen Jones
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

It's not an internal system beep, it's a sound file and therefore subject to your system volume. If you have any other sounds turned on, then this would be no more annoying. I guess it depends on your work arrangement.

--Josh

JWA
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Laptop owners have had it difficult to replace individual keys on their laptops when they are lost, worn or damaged. If this is your issue here is a site that carries individual keys, which is far less expensive than replacing a full keyboard: http://www.stores.ebay.com/eshaksstore

Easton
Friday, March 5, 2004

Changing the volume control, or even muting it, does not make any difference to the volume.

Stephen Jones
Saturday, March 6, 2004