geekhack
geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: jpc on Thu, 23 September 2010, 17:28:38
-
Mom said she could use a compact keyboard at work, to save desk space. Her office is primarily pen-and-paper.
So I picked up this Siig USB Mini Multimedia (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110585802600&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT) keyboard for her. Nice ANSI layout, scissor switches, works fine.
You know what happens next.
RING RING RING
"Hi honey, I'm using this keyboard, but I need your help with something specific. When I am typing a word like 'SEPTEMBER', the S and the E come up okay, but the P is a number instead..."
So we figure out how to press NumLk on this board. It's "Fn-Insert" so the key combo must be explained.
Five minutes later:
RING RING
"Hi honey, now it's working better but there's still another problem with my Word. It used to be that I could place the cursor in the middle of a word or a sentence, and then if I type something, it would be added there, but now it's not working. The darn thing erases whatever was there before, why is it doing that?"
The unfortunate overlap of Insert and NumLk has led her to put Word into overwrite-mode....
And now you know why 104-key boards are universal.
Yo momma's got a high TCO.
-
Mine is kinda the opposite: she loves the numerical section and could live without the row of numbers above the letters.
-
I could live with the number row being ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) without hitting the shift key,
and with the F1...F10 being the digits,
and with Shift+F1 being F1.
For programming, half the characters I type are shifted number row keys....
Needs more xmodmap!
-
I could live without the numerical section or without the middle, actually (I grew up with an XT, the numpad cursors are so vastly superior to WSAD). Wish I were rich and could buy HHKB2 for spamming and a separate Numpad to put farther away. Seems I'll have to console myself with an Otaku Model M.
By the way, isn't it ironical how keyboards are getting programmable keys but few people use anything else than F5 and F11 (and these only in a web browser if at all) or ALT+F4 (like anybody actually still learns Windows combo shortcuts in the era of a hardware ALT+SPACE key, sigh).