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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: CdrJameson on Tue, 18 September 2012, 13:55:28
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I have just received my very first mechanical keyboard. It's nothing fancy (Steelseries 6gv2) but I am very impressed with how it feels and types, I am not really a gamer so the Cherry black switches aren't really suitable but for the price and the quality I am chuffed to bits. A world of difference from 'normal' keyboards, very pleased I made the change; the bank manager(wife) still thinks I am crazy to spend £70 on a keyboard when one could be had for much less than half that!
However I have an issue with two keys which have been swapped. I bought a UK layout board and the back-tick key-cap has been swapped with the hash(pound/number) key-cap. See photos; I have not found a correct keyboard choice in win 7 regional settings so when I press my hash (just below the Esc key) a back-tick is typed and when I press my back-tick key, a hash is typed. It's only a small niggle but I am determined to sort it out.
If this isn't a recognised UK layout, how easy is it to change the key-caps without the correct tool, to reflect the standard UK layout? Or as I only received it today should I just send it back and get my supplier to sort it out?
For anyone like me dithering about taking the mechanical plunge, do it, you wont be disappointed.
(http://i1145.photobucket.com/albums/o504/CdrJameson/59e87361.jpg)
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I think you're better off remapping than changing the cap. I use autohotkey, but other swear by key tweak.
For what it's worth, I've remapped my laptop to dvorak, and I've placed the # key in the same place as the photo above.
The placement of the backtick on the left isn't all that great. Perhaps you could find a better use for the key?
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Cheers Hoggy for the reply; got it all sorted now.
I had a look at autohotkeys on your suggestion, but for the mapping to be in force I would have had to be running an instance of the script. Keytweak, again your suggestion, looked like just the tool for me, but it assumes you're starting with a US layout keyboard. So the solution for any other UK users out there is to use sharpkeys; almost as user-friendly as keytweak, doesn't assume any keyboard layout but is just as effective and like keytweak, it edits the registry so you only need to set the mapping once.
But thanks again for pointing me in the right direction.
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Welcome to Geekhack!
With MX blacks yuo will definitely notice a difference to your average rubber dome. I quite like blacks, but haven't tried using them for an extended period.
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I don't know that that keyboard is Elite enough for you …
Autohotkey is invaluable in that you can bind shortcuts to all sorts of commands. The following directives remove the tray icon and create keyboard shortcuts to reload the script (after editing it), close the script (not normally needed!) and open the script for editing in my choice of editor (the alternative would be to create an Edit verb for .ahk files and figure out how to pass verbs to the shell from Autohotkey.
#NoTrayIcon
^!+Home::Reload
^!+End::ExitApp
+^!Insert::Run, "C:\Program Files\JujuSoft\JujuEdit\JujuEdit.exe" %A_ScriptFullPath%
That layout obviously comes from someone who misses the big-ass enter days of yore. Big-ass enter keyboards senselessly consume too much space with enter, so you get weird ideas such as putting keys in the gaps between ctrl and alt (before Windows and menu went there) and making the backspace key 1u and adding another key up there. Steelseries have decided that no-one uses right shift, so screw it and put a key there instead. I don't know whether the Steelseries key can be made into a Windows key, because I use LWin a lot, and RWin very rarely. I guess that's the Fn key? If I need media mappings I can just bind those directly in Winamp (ctrl+numpad± for volume, add shift to change track).
That's one of my beefs with vintage keyboards: back then, the IBM Model M layout was not an industry standard and you got a load of stupid ideas. Why Steelseries can't just stick with ISO I have no idea.